Dear Editor,
For the past 12 years, we have been told that we need to restart our forest industry to prevent our resource from being transported and transformed outside the region, while creating or maintaining local jobs. To achieve this, we need to . . .
“improve the competitiveness of the forest industry” as outlined in the Vision 2020 Strategic Plan developed in 2009 by the MRC, CLD and SADC in collaboration with several stakeholders in the community, including the Groupement forestier du Pontiac and the Pontiac Forest Products Producers Board to name a few. Among other things, it mentions that we need to stimulate the emergence of innovations as well as to promote second and third transformation projects as well as innovative products. Hence the hiring of a qualified person to assist the MRC in its efforts to implement the recommendations of the analyses and consultations used to produce the Strategic Plan. The result of this approach has been to have positioned us very favourably to attract an innovative company which will allow us to maximize the use of biomass while creating quality jobs, to offer a larger market to local wood producers and to increase the opportunities to consolidate existing industries.
Unfortunately, the Council of Mayors has preferred to put an end to this project, which is about to come to fruition in a near future, largely because of a lack of leadership from the warden who can only explain the basis of her resolution by the salary of the consultant and the length of the term of office.
Firstly, Rome was not built in one day and secondly the talent has a price as it was sometimes mentioned when hiring some employees of the MRC. And this salary becomes all the higher when one considers that all the work they produce is in vain. So, I must conclude that either there are personal reasons that motivate this position, as is unfortunately too often the case, or we like to waste taxpayers’ money to produce beautiful studies to make oneself look good, or to take advantage of a grant, but that will serve no purpose other than to create hope.
We need more than hope, we need action. We must stop talking on both sides of our mouths by saying on the one hand that we support a project but refuse to continue the steps taken on the other for reasons that are not. And during all these unproductive debates, our wood continues to leave the region, our young people leave the region, our population ages and our skilled workforce becomes increasingly scarce. Indeed, we are not out of the woods.
Jean-Pierre Landry
Campbell’s Bay, Que.
