Industry and Trades - Fall/Winter 2022

AND TRADES

BC Natural Resources Forum returns to Prince George

The resource sector conference returns as a live event, after going virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic.

natural resource sector leaders.

Registration is now open for the BC Natural Resources Forum, which returns to Prince George Jan. 17-19, 2023.

The forum marks its 20th anniversary next year, and will be returning as a live event at the Prince George Conference and Civic Centre after two years as a virtual event because of the COVID19 pandemic.

Organizers call it “Western Canada’s largest multi-sector resource conference.” The event brings together First Nations, government and

The event schedule is available online at https:// bcnaturalresourcesforum. com/program/eventschedule/, however keynote speakers for 2023 have not yet been announced. The event will feature a banquet dinner, keynote lunches, the Ministers’ Breakfast, two exciting networking receptions and a line-up of speakers.

To register, go online to https:// bcnaturalresourcesforum. com/registration/register-1/.

Citizen staff

B.C. Premier John Horgan gave the keynote address at the 2019 BC Natural Resources Forum in Prince George. Citizen file photo by Jess Fedigan

Oil spill response tested in Prince George in Fraser River simulation

Ted Clarke Citizen staff

What would happen if an oil pipeline burst and spilled its toxic contents into the Fraser River in Prince George?

Planning for a worst-case sce nario is a priority for Pembina Pipeline Corporation and last Thursday the Calgary-based

company conducted an emer gency response training exercise in the Fraser at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park. The five-hour disaster simulation is designed to help Pembina personnel mini mize response times in the event of a real-life incident.

The simulation started with a

gathering at a command post for a briefing to outline the objec tives of the exercise to the 31 first responders who were told the early-morning spill had resulted in the release of 200 cubic metres of light crude oil.

The exercise involved pipeline employees, private contrac tors, city personnel and Prince George RCMP, who learned how to co-ordinate an emer gency response to minimize the impact of the spill on the environment and act quickly if any humans or wildlife come in contact with the oil. A decon tamination station was set up at the top of the berm overlooking the river with personnel ready to spray cleaning agents on people, birds or mammals.

“Our main objective is the life safety of our crew and trying to contain as much oil as we can to help mitigate downstream,” said Pembina Pipelines area foreman Chris Hrab, the on-site com mander. “So we have two large work boats deploying (the spill containment boom) and setting the anchors and the third boat is our safety guy if we have a man overboard situation. They’re also watching to communicate to the public if we have a plea sure craft coming down the river.”

The start of the operation was

delayed by fog and it took about 90 minutes to secure the containment boom in place. Public access to the riverbank was closed during the four-hour simulation, as it would be if there was a real spill. Manikins were stationed along the shore at several points to discourage birds from landing in the river.

Using the shoreline at the south end of the park, the emergency crews carried 1,000 feet of con tainment booms down to the river, which were then linked together to form three long sec tions. The first segment was towed in a boat to an anchor position near the middle of the river and two other long seg ments were then added to create the 1,000-foot barrier needed to divert spilled oil. Each section of boom, made of tough PVC rubber material, has a ballast chain running through the bot tom to keep it floating upright. Containment booms work because light oil (the type that gets pumped to the Tidewater Midstream refinery in Prince George) is less dense than water and floats on the surface.

Ropes anchored along the shore were then attached to the boom and workers cinched in the ropes until the desired angle was achieved to funnel the mock oil spill to the shore to a weir-type oil skimmer that also floats.

Citizen staff photo

First responders from Swat Consulting Inc., connect an oil containment boom in the Fraser River adjacent to Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park last week as part of Pembina Pipeline’s emergency management training exercise.

Plugging the leaks in B.C.’s oil and gas sector

CleanBC Industry Fund helps natural gas sector electrify, reduce methane emissions

Nelson Bennett Glacier Media

Electrification, carbon capture, methane abatement – there’s work afoot in the Montney formation of northeastern B.C. to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from B.C.’s oil and gas sector.

It’s just not clear whether all the investments being made will be enough to meet the province’s aggressive emission reduction

targets. B.C.’s oil and gas sector, ordered by the B.C. government to go on a carbon diet, has just eight years left to lose a third of its greenhouse gas weight. The province’s CleanBC plan sets reduction targets for the oil and gas sector. By 2030, methane emissions are to be 75 per cent below 2014 levels and overall GHG emissions 33 per cent to 38 per cent below 2007 levels.

The plan also provides funding to help industry make the investments needed under the CleanBC Industry Fund, which is part of a CleanBC program for industry that earned the province an award at COP26 last year for most creative climate solution.

B.C.’s oil and gas sector accounts for one-fifth of the province’s emissions. Reducing its emissions intensity is critical to its survival. The only way it can continue to grow – and its growth is necessary if B.C. is to have a liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry – and still meet emission reduction targets is to find ways to reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane intensities.

There are solutions available, like replacing natural gas generators at gas processing plants with electric ones or swapping out pneumatic valves at well pads for electric valves to reduce methane leakage. All of this costs money, which is where the CleanBC Industry Fund comes in.

From 2019 to 2021, $113 million has been granted for decarbonization initiatives.

“I think this program is important in moving industry in the right direction, and this shows that there’s uptake –that companies are using the program to make the kinds of reductions that we need to be seeing to lower emissions in industry,” said Jan Gorski, program director for oil and gas at the Pembina Institute.

While a number of pulp mill and mine operators have received sizable grants under the fund, the oil and gas sector has received the lion’s share of funding – not surprising, given that it is the province’s second largest emitter of GHGs by sector.

One of the largest recipients of the CleanBC Industry Fund grants to date is NorthRiver Midstream Inc., which has been given $18.5 million for three projects, including $7.5 million to electrify its Dawson Creek natural gas plant and $10 million for a carbon capture and sequestration project. The latter project will capture and sequester “CO2-rich acid gas” at its McMahon gas processing plant near Fort St. John.

In total, the NorthRiver’s investments are estimated to reduce GHGs by about 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 between now and 2031 – equivalent to removing 409,392 cars from the road for one year.

Arc Resources Ltd. (TSX:ARX) has received $13.7 million to electrify its Dawson Creek natural gas plant.

The size of CleanBC Industry Fund grants are based on the amount of emissions that will be avoided. In Arc Resources’ case, electrifying the Dawson Creek plant is estimated to reduce emissions by 135,000 tonnes annually.

The total capital cost to electrify the Dawson Creek plant is about $60 million, so the grant will cover slightly less than one-

plant in northeastern B.C.,

four that use electricity instead of

quarter of the cost.

There are 74 natural gas processing plants in B.C. These plants remove impurities, like hydrogen sulphide, and separate out liquids (light oil, condensate, propane).

Most of them burn natural gas to produce power for their operations. Sixteen have converted to electricity.

Four of those electrified plants belong to Arc Resources, which operates six plants in B.C. In addition to electrifying the Dawson Creek plant, the company plans to build a seventh natural gas plant – the Attachie project – which will also be electrified.

Thanks to new BC Hydro transmission lines, clean grid power is now available to the upstream sector in northeastern

B.C. According to a 2018 Clean Energy BC white paper, “extensive electrification” of the upstream could reduce the natural gas sector’s emissions by 60 per cent.

The CleanBC Industry Fund helps companies cover some of the cost of tying into the grid and replacing natural gas turbines with electric drive. Arc Resources operates i n both B.C. and Alberta. Armin Jahangiri, Arc Resources’ senior vice-president and chief operating officer, said B.C.’s clean hydro power gives it an advantage when it comes to decarbonizing natural gas production through electrification.

Even if Alberta manages to phase out coal power by 2030, it still gets more than 50 per cent of its power from natural gas, so electrifying natural gas processing plants in Alberta would not achieve the kind of emissions reductions that can be achieved in B.C.

“Electrification in Alberta is still a big question mark because of the grid emissions intensity,” Jahangiri said.

A number of oil and gas companies are receiving smaller grants to reduce methane emissions by switching out pneumatic actuators with electric ones. On well pads, these actuators use natural gas to open and close valves, which means methane escapes every time a valve opens.

Methane is magnitudes worse than CO2 in global warming potential (GWP). A single kilogram of methane has the same GWP as 27.9 kilograms of CO2 over a 100-year period.

A number of companies are tapping the CleanBC Industry Fund to switch from gasactivated valves to electric on well pads, some of which will get their electricity from solar panels.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (TSX:CNQ ), for example, received $2 million last year from the industry fund to replace 254 actuators at well sites with solar-powered electric actuators. The switch will reduce emissions by 298,913 tonnes of CO2 equivalent –

equivalent to the emissions produced by 46,427 cars over a year.

Petronas and Veresen Midstream received $482,320 and $817,839, respectively, to install vapour recovery units at their processing plants, which reduces the flaring (burning) and venting of natural gas. Ovintiv Inc. (TSX:OVV) is receiving $1.3 million to retrofit gas processing equipment at its Cutbank Ridge facility near Dawson Creek. The equipment will run on compressed air

instead of methane.

Gorski said it’s hard to assess how far some of the efforts underway will move the sector toward hitting reduction targets.

“We really need to see what they’re expecting in 2030 on an annual basis to get a sense of how far this gets us,” he said.

“But overall it’s a step in the right direction towards reducing these emissions. We now need to scale up these investments from industry if B.C.’s going to meet their targets.”

“ I think this program is important in moving industry in the right direction, and this shows that there’s uptake –that companies are using the program to make the kinds of reductions that we need to be seeing to lower emissions in industry.

Ideon aims to revolutionize mineral exploration by radically reducing the number of drill holes needed

Coming up with resource estimates for prospective new mines can be a poky business in more ways than one. Poky in that a lot of holes have to be poked into the earth. And poky as in slow. Drilling dozens, if not hundreds, of bore holes deep into the ground to get ore samples can be a tedious and costly exercise. So what if you could just X-ray the ground instead?

That’s basically what Vancouver’s Ideon Technologies does, and some of the world’s biggest mining companies are using the technology as a way to take some of the guesswork out of exploration, including Teck Resources (TSX:TECK.B), BHP (NYSE:BHP) and Vale S.A. (BVMF:VALE3), a Brazilian multi-national mining company. Ideon’s technology detects subatomic particles – muons – that bombard the earth from space. This provides a way of reading what’s underground – a kind of geological X-ray that can paint 3D geological maps for mining and exploration companies.

It can’t tell what types of minerals

are underground, but it can describe ore densities. This can take a lot of guesswork out of the exploratory drilling that is needed for mining companies to get an idea of where ore bodies might be and in what concentration.

The technology works best with base metals, critical minerals and uranium.

One of the first demonstrations of the technology was in 2012 at the Myra Falls mine on Vancouver Island. Nyrstar Corp. wanted to explore beyond its Myra Falls mine lead-zinc mine, which was acquired in 2020 by Trafigura Mining Group.

But one suspected deposit was underneath a provincial park –Strathcona – and drilling in a Class A park wasn’t much of an option.

So the company asked Ideon to use its new detection system to try to get a reading of what was underneath the park – the idea being that, if it could prove there is an ore body worth exploiting, it could extend its underground mine in that direction without having to go drilling in a provincial park.

Nelson Bennett Glacier Media

Ideon CEO Gary Agnew says X-raying the earth can reduce mineral exploration costs, impacts | Photo: Submitted

Some of the world’s biggest mining companies have since been using Ideon’s detection system. There are about 50 Ideon sensors currently deployed at mineral prospects around the world.

Some companies have tested the technology with blind trials, in which Ideon uses its technology to paint a picture of what’s underground, in terms of ore densities, which is then compared to what the company already knows about it through conventional drilling.

One of these blind trials was with BHP in Australia at a nickel prospect.

“The customer invested in a couple of hundred drill holes in that particular area,” said Ideon CEO Gary Agnew. “So they had already done the work the old way, and then deployed our detectors for two months. We were able to image accurately what they had understood the ore body to be. What was a really important distinction in that particular survey was we were able to image a lobe of the deposit that the customer had missed through drilling.

“We’ve now deployed our fifth survey with BHP. We proved the technology and now we’ve moved onto a number of other surveys on the same site and moved onto an additional site.”

Ideon sensors can be sent down a conventionally sized bore hole.

The sensors can only look up, not down, so they must be sunk below any suspected ore body. Sensors take readings of everything that is above it.

Over a period of weeks or months, radiographic images are slowly created and eventually these are worked up into 3D models.

Typically, 10 to 20 sensors are deployed. The deeper down they have to be placed, the longer they have to stay there to get readings, because muons lose energy the further they penetrate the earth. So the shallower the deposit, the quicker the process is.

It can take anywhere from 30 days to 12 months for radiographic images to form, depending on the depth of the deposit.

“If the customer is time sensitive, we can double the number of detectors on a particular project to halve the imaging time,” Agnew said.

In conventional exploration, it can take many weeks or months to compile all the drill results into a resource report. It takes only hours or days for Ideon to compile its data into a final estimate.

“Some of the other geophysical techniques, the data collection time is very quick, but the post processing is very long,” Agnew said.

“Our data collecting time is a bit longer, but our post processing is very quick.”

Agnew said Ideon’s technology doesn’t eliminate the need for conventional drilling, but can reduce the amount of drill holes needed, which reduces costs as well as environmental impacts.

“If we’re involved in the right stage of the project, we can reduce drilling 10 times,” Agnew said.

Two companies are currently using Ideon technology on uranium prospects in Saskatchewan, and Vale S.A. recently tapped Ideon technology to do surveying at two Canadian projects.

“With the critical mineral shortage, the need to move to renewable energy, we see a tremendous opportunity to help the mining industry find critical minerals more efficiently,” Agnew said.

With the critical mineral shortage, the need to move to renewable energy, we see a tremendous opportunity to help the mining industry find critical minerals more efficiently

Tractor with a Trombone Trailer

Largest Most VersatILe Fleet...

We are excited to be in our 8th amazing year in Prince George with the biggest and most versatile fleet of truck mounted cranes in the central interior as well as the largest knuckle boom!

FOR

BC

offers grants

support hiring apprentices

apprentices.

Citizen staff

Employers in the B.C. construction industry can now get grants of up to

$40,000 to help cover the costs of hiring and training first-year apprentices. In September, the BC

Construction Association announced it would provide grants of $5,000 for each new first-year apprentice registered in one of 39 Red Seal trades. The grant doubles to $10,000 if the worker self-reports as a woman, new Canadian, LGBTQ2S+, Indigenous, a person with a disability, or a visible minority. Companies can receive a maximum of $40,000 in grants, over the two years of the program. “Since the funding announcement in August, nearly 150 contractors have already signed up to be notified as soon as we are open,” association president Chris Atchison said. “In this first phase, we’re encouraging employers to access the funds by promoting their best labourers into first-year apprenticeship positions. It’s a valuable opportunity for a deserving employee and faster than finding and hiring brand new talent. We encourage everyone to take advantage of these substantial financial incentives.”

B.C.’s construction industry is roughly 95 per cent male and

faces a shortage of skilled workers during a period of high demand, according to information release by the association. Most construction companies are small – 90 per cent employee 20 or fewer workers.

The program is funded by the federal Apprenticeship Service, which provided $21 million to the BC Construction Association to deliver to the funding to employers. Several other organizations across B.C. and Canada have received similar funding, but companies can only register with one of them.

“We’ll have a big talent pool for employers to tap for new hires because we span the province with our workforce development programs, are promoting our apprenticeship drive on every job-search platform and are mounting a major consumer campaign called Builders Life that will change the trades conversation to attract new talent,” program manager Linda Ryan said.

For more information about the program, go online to: https://bccassn.com/ apprenticeship-services/.

B.C.

and training apprentices. Glacier Media file photo

Ted Clarke Citizen staff

Construction has started on a new office building expected to become the Prince George headquarters of an 80-employee company.

Construction crews have begun laying out the footprint for the concrete foundation of the 21,170 square-foot two-storey building, located in the Spruceland subdivision at 700 Kinsmen Place.

The project required a development variance permit, which was approved unanimously by city council in June, against the advice of city director of planning and development Deanna Wasnik.

The site now cleared for the building once housed the Triad Racquets and Fitness Centre,

which was destroyed in a fire May 18, 1991, and has been vacant ever since. The lot, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Stuart Drive, is next to the building that houses Skyline Dental and TC Energy.

Wasnik had advised council the project is not consistent with C4 zoning regulations intended to encourage developers to build downtown. She pointed out that the project goes against the city’s official community plan, whose policies are designed to restrict urban sprawl.

“It is very important to support and build downtown, but it is also important to support locations like this,” Coun. Garth Frizzell said at the June 20 council meeting.

Under the C4 zoning, as it applied to the property before the variance,

Construction underway for new office building in Spruceland

the maximum floor area allowed for office use is normally 560 sq. metres (6,028 sq. feet), and the maximum allowable floor area for any single office tenancy is 280 sq. metres (3.014 sq. feet). City council approved increasing both those areas to 1,967 sq. metres for the Kinsmen Place project.

The project is being built by Prince George developer Rod McLeod. In a May 30 letter to the city, McLeod said the proposed development is to house the offices of a major tenant which has other offices in B.C. and is looking for “representation in the North.”

“Although we are in a confidentiality agreement with the tenant there is a lease agreement in place if the variance is approved,” McLeod wrote. “This

is a great, long-term and reliable tenant for Prince George which would employ approximately 80 employees and provide reliable tax revenue to the City of Prince George.”

McLeod also stated in the letter there were no sites downtown that meet the tenant’s requirements. He said the tenant has agreed to a 10-year lease for the building, which would accommodate 80 workers and have 68 parking stalls.

The 33,977 square-foot property, which listed for $349,000, has been sold. Excavators were brought in to remove the concrete remnants of the Triad Club and clear the forested land to allow for the new building.

SErviNG BC & AlBErTA

Four Rivers Co-op taking over 10 Husky fuel stations in northern B.C.

Four Rivers Co-op of Vanderhoof opened its gas bar/car wash in Prince George in February 2018. The company is taking over three Husky filling stations in the city, which will be rebranded as Co-op stations

Ted Clarke Citizen staff

Four Rivers Co-op is expanding its reach into the fuel tanks of Prince George motorists.

The Vanderhoof-based company has purchased 10

retail fuel stations in northern B.C. as part of a decision by its parent company, Federation Co-operative Ltd., to buy 171 Husky retail sites in Western Canada and Ontario from Cenovus Energy.

Three of those corporately owned Husky filling stations soon to be rebranded as Co-op stations are in Prince George - at 1746 John Hart Highway, 835 Central St West, and 2511 Range Rd. The rebranding transformation will begin in January and is expected to be complete by March.

“It’s planned for one station at a time, so we will go to one of the stations, shut it down for a week then when we reopen anywhere five to eight days later it will have the Co-op look – street signs, the canopies, the pump handles and the inside of the store - and we’ll put in our point-of-sale system,” said Four Rivers Co-op general manager Allan Bieganski.

Four Rivers opened its first retail fuel site in Prince George in February 2018 along Highway 16 West at 6749 Westgate Ave. It also operates cardlock facilities at Hart Highway and BCR Industrial Site locations.

The other seven Husky station locations Four Rivers is taking over are in Williams Lake (two), Kitimat, Terrace, Burns Lake, Quesnel and 100 Mile House. Co-op will also assume Husky’s fuel

supply contracts at two dealer-owned sites in Prince George.

The Husky stations will continue to operate with no visible changes to customers until they are rebranded as Co-op fuel stations. Customers will continue to accumulate and redeem points in the Husky Rewards program on all applicable transactions and Husky gift cards will continue to be honoured until the stations re-open as Co-op.

People who join Four Rivers Co-op and purchase a $10 investment share to obtain personal membership numbers receive annual patronage rebates based on the profits of the company, but memberships won’t apply for eligible purchases at Husky stations until the stores are rebranded.

Four River revenues recovered significantly in 2021 to $258.9 million, after a tough pandemic year in 2020, and Bieganski says Four Rivers is well on its way to a record year. With fuel prices at unprecedented levels through most of 2022 he says the company expects revenues will be close to $320 million and the

allocation rates for members will reflect that.

In 2021, Four Rivers’ return rate for petroleum fuel/ propane was 4.35 per cent, oil/lubricants 5 per cent, convenience store/food/agro centres was 3.15 per cent and fertilizer was 1.25 per cent. The company invested $187,700 into the community and supported 80 community groups while employing 200 people at its 21 locations.

Four Rivers has operated a grocery store in Vanderhoof since the company formed in 1944 and Bieganski says he regularly gets asked if there are plans for Co-op to open a food store in Prince George. That speculation started to increase in February 2021 when Save-On Foods announced its plan to close its Parkwood Mall location and relocate to a new store being built at Pine Centre Mall.

Then on Monday, city council passed third reading of a rezoning amendment to allow Brink Properties Inc., to proceed with its Nechako Corners commercial development, which will include a 30,000 square-foot grocery store.

Four Rivers looked into getting into the Prince George retail food market soon after it opened the filling station/car wash at Westgate and the company commissioned a market feasibility study two years ago, which advised against it.

“Based on that study, we determined Prince George was already overstored and we were concerned about diluting the business and not getting an appropriate payback to make it pay for the membership,” said Bieganski.

“We looked at all the statistics, all the other stores, and what the food volume should be, it’s a very detailed informed study and we said we don’t think there room to crack that market. In this case, what the projection on food sales were and what the sores were capturing was almost 100 per cent. So we thought, how are we going to take our market share without getting into a price war and making it a profitable venture in the longterm.”

He also said it’s costly to build a food store from scratch, and it would have to be significantly larger than the Four Rivers supermarket

in Vanderhoof.

“It will be interesting to see what plays out and maybe we need to revisit that study or commission a new one,” Bieganski. ”I’ve learned to never say never.”

Four Rivers now has 31 retail locations, including its food store and hardware store in Vanderhoof, agricultural supply centres in Vanderhoof and Quesnel, 15 cardlocks and 12 retail filling stations.

Toll Free: 1-877-566-1177

Submitted

B.C. wood pellets sourced from residuals, low-quality logs, study says

A study commissioned by the Wood Pellet Association of Canada shows that sawlogs aren’t being used for wood pellets in the province.

Citizen staff

A study commissioned by the Wood Pellet Association of Canada shows that lumberquality wood isn’t being used to produce wood pellets in B.C.

The study, released in September, is available online here: https://www. pellet.org/wp-content/ uploads/2022/09/WPACfibre_ study_DESIGN_FINAL.pdf. Respected forest experts and registered professional foresters Gary Bull, Jeremy Williams, Jim Thrower and Brad Bennett analysed government and private sector data, audit reports and conducted interviews with pellet plant operators and local communities.

“We reviewed the data for virtually every truckload

of fibre for each pellet mill in the province and were able to source forest-based residuals down to the forest harvesting block for each mill,” Bull said in a statement issued in September. “The findings were clear: 85 per cent of the fibre for pellets comes from the by-products of the sawmills and allied industries, and the remaining 15 per cent comes from bush grind and low-quality logs where the only other option is to burn the low-grade logs and brush piles on site in order to reduce fire risk.”

Currently, almost all wood pellets produced in B.C. are certified under the international recognized Sustainable Biomass Program and the fibre is from sustainably managed forests in B.C. certified under t

The Westview Wood Pellet Terminal at the Port of Prince Rupert is seen in an undated handout photo.

Pinnacle Renewables handout photo

Today our sector is taking what was once considered waste and instead is enhancing forest health, creating jobs, and reducing wildfire risk and GHG emissions from slash burning

Around three quarters of the world’s renewable energy is from biomass.

“Today our sector is taking what was once considered waste and instead is enhancing forest health, creating jobs, and reducing wildfire risk and GHG emissions from slash burning,” association executive director Gordon Murray said. “British Columbia wood pellets are a vital solution in the global fight against climate change by replacing fossil fuels like coal and providing a gateway to the bioeconomy.”

The study also examined the impact on groups like the Burns Lake Community Forest, which is owned by the Village of Burns Lake. The village equally shares its revenue with the Tsi’lKazKoh and Wet’suwet’en First Nations communities

The Canadian Standards Association, the Forest Stewardship Council or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the association said.

“The notion of harvesting whole stands of timber or displacing higher value forest products for the purpose of producing wood pellets is counter to the overall economic and environmental objectives of using wood pellets,” Thrower said.

The study also found that the pellet sector create value from mill residues, creating additional revenue streams for sawmills and other facilities, and reduces smoke from beehive burners.

Bioenergy currently accounts for about 10 per cent of total final energy consumptions and two per cent of global electricity generation, and accounts for 60 per cent of all renewable energy in the United States and European Union.

“As a community forest that surrounds much of the community’s recreational playground, if we didn’t practice complete utilization we would hear about it in town from the public,” community forest general manager Frank Varga said.

“Without the Burns Lake Drax facility, we wouldn’t have a home for a significant component of our low-grade harvesting profile and the level of waste would not be socially acceptable.”

Scan the code to read the September study

Company

Lawn

gains put squeeze

Chung Chow Glacier Media

The Bank of Canada’s efforts to cool the economy through a string of rate-hikes is getting mixed results on the West Coast.

After shedding 28k jobs in August, the province recovered all those losses by adding 32k jobs in September, data released Friday by Statistics Canada reveals.

The country’s central bank has raised its key rate by 300 basis point since the start of the year in a bid to tamp down on inflation. The expectation is that the economy would cool as a result of less access to cheap capital, eventually leading to broader job losses.

While nationwide job losses totalled 39,700 in August, the country posted gains of 21k jobs in September.

“This is a Canadian jobs report without the drama and fully consistent with a slowing economy,” BMO chief economist Douglas Porter said in a note, referring to the national numbers.

“Job conditions are certainly not cool enough to prompt the Bank of Canada to fully back off from its aggressive tightening campaign. But at the same time, the underlying calming suggests that the Bank may at least consider slowing the pace of hikes.”

Meanwhile, B.C.’s unemployment rate dropped significantly last month – down 0.5% points to reach 4.3%. Such a low rate of unemployment continues to put strains on labour markets already dealing with widespread labour shortages.

Canada’s unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage points last month to land at 5.2%.

“That excess of labour demand versus available supply will limit the pace of further increases in the unemployment rate near-term, even as the number of job postings continues to slow, and will continue to add to wage pressures,” RBC assistant chief economist Nathan Janzen said in a note, referring to the

national data. While it appears on the surface that B.C. made up losses between September and August, a closer look at the difference between gains in full-time and part-time jobs reveals some notable gaps. The province lost 31,900 full-time jobs in August at the same time it added 3.7k part-time jobs.

But most of B.C.’s gains last month came via part-time employment (22k jobs), while the province added 10,500 full-time jobs. That leaves more than 20k full-time jobs still missing between the past two months.

“It is a weird economic situation we’re in. It’s unprecedented,” B.C. Jobs Minister Ravi Kahlon told BIVfollowing the release of Friday’s data. “What we know is that we’re going to have challenges on the labour market for some years.”

Describing the Bank of Canada’s actions as an “induced recession,” Kahlon said he expects B.C.’s jobs numbers to face some ups and

downs in the short term.

“The impact of the interest rates going up as aggressively as they are, I think we’re going to start feeling that impact later this year – and definitely next year – in decisions that are made by employers,” he said, adding he remains cautiously optimistic about the state of the province’s labour market. “I know that people are having a tough time and it’s not easy out there. But when we continue to see numbers like this, it shows us that we have a very diverse economy and we’re well positioned for any of the challenges that may come ahead.”

Broken down by industry, the West Coast’s biggest gains were in utilities (+6.4k jobs), education (+6.3k jobs) and natural resources (+4.6k jobs).

The biggest losses were felt in manufacturing (-3.4kjobs), other services (-2.1k jobs) and public administration (-2.1k jobs).