Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson says his first thought on the Tolko curtailment is with the employees that will be affected.
Simpson says the local government now need to work with the Province to make sure that those employees get the kind of support that they will need because he says he has been told that it is an indefinite curtailment so we don’t know when and if Tolko operations will come back to full production again.
His says his 2nd thought is frustration with the Provincial Government…
“I am increasingly becoming frustrated with a provincial government that is going overboard to bring into existence an industry that doesn’t exist, doesn’t pay corporate taxes and doesn’t employ one person in the province and that’s the LNG industry. Meanwhile we have our forest industry and our mining sector asking the government for assistance.”
Simpson says those industries do employ real people and pay corporate and payroll taxes.
He says for forestry, the future fibre supply has been an outstanding issue for 5 or 6 years now.
He says Quesnel and the entire area needs answers to questions about how we commercialize and make viable the harvesting in our area.
