Quesnel City Council has a meeting with the province’s Minister of Forests this weekend.
Ravi Parmar will be in Quesnel on Sunday. (Jan 18)
City Councillor Mitch Vik, also the Acting Mayor, says it is a follow up to a brief meeting they had with him at the Union of BC Municipalities convention.
“The main goal for this meeting is to highlight concerns we have about the vulnerability in the forest sector and to advance some potential solutions that have arisen from the city’s Forestry Innovation Centre, specifically the advanced forestry equipment training program which if it is set up in the Cariboo it could assist in solving the skills gaps that exist in our sector.”
Vik says they also plan to talk to him about the bio cluster development zone which could attract some investment and improve market diversification in the region and help build resiliency in the sector.
He says fire mitigation will also be on he agenda.
“As a community, we have a concern with fire mitigation. Specifically right now the hot topic for us is Dragon Mountain. We have made some progress with the ministry on that, and we would like to continue that conversation for sure.”
Vik says the meeting is very important, especially in light of the tough time in forestry right now.
“Our community, Quesnel, remains in a very forest integrated situation. In fact, we’re the most forest integrated community in North America, and we need to be taking every opportunity that we can as a Council to put us in front of decision makers so we can present some practical solutions.”
Vik says Council will update the community on what comes out of this meeting.
