VANCOUVER (Canadian Press) - The leaders of British Columbia’s key forest sector want Ottawa to step into the labour dispute that has closed West Coast ports. In a letter to Prime Minister Jean Chretien, 16 senior executives called on the government to end the closure immediately.
The letter is “an unprecedented expression of concern about the mounting crisis at the Port of Vancouver and other B.C. ports,” said Ron MacDonald, president of the Council of Forest Industries and one of 16 signatories.
“As of today, more than $50 million worth of forest products have been sidelined or diverted to other ports at great cost to industry,” the letter states.
“As this lockout drags on, sales will be lost and valued customers will be snapped up by competing jurisdictions.”
The council was one of three business organizations Thursday to demand a quick end to the port closure, which is estimated to be costing the Canadian economy $100 million a day.
Dockworkers, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, were locked out Sunday after refusing to put the B.C. Maritime Employers’ Association’s last contract offer to their members for a vote.
The union wants the association to compel the sulphur consortium Sultran to return a sulphur-testing contract to a unionized company.
The association says Sultran is not a member of its group - though it controls a Vancouver terminal.
Forest council chairman Gordon Steele, president of Riverside Forest Products, said the letter points out that “even the ability to maintain operations at our mills will soon be in jeopardy.”
Weyerhaeuser president Bill Gaynor said the recent recovery of the B.C. forest sector, which had a losing year in 1998, is exceptionally fragile.
“If we are not able to restore stability to port operations quickly, our efforts to restore our global competitiveness will have been negated,” said Gaynor.
MacDonald said the forest industry, British Columbia’s largest resource sector, generates $17 billion in annual production.
“It is B.C.’s major economic engine,” he said. “As such, we are urging the prime minister to take the only action reasonable under the circumstances and that is restore port operations.”
The federal labour and transport ministers earlier ruled out intervening in the dispute.
Ottawa has ended previous work stoppages at West Coast ports when they threatened the movement of Prairie grain. But changes to legislation now keep grain terminals open.
If the labour stoppage does not end soon, Christmas products from Asia may not be available to shoppers in time for the holiday season, says the Canadian Gift and Tableware Association.
Even worse, special millennium merchandise will be stick in transit, said association president Deborah Dugan.
“If consumers can’t find millennium gifts and merchandise in stores soon, one of the best sales opportunities ever will be lost,” Dugan said Thursday.
“These are the ultimate in ’perishable goods;’ if they aren’t sold now, they will be garbage.”
Dugan said most of the association’s 1,500 members are family-owned, small and medium-sized enterprises that operate on a low profit margin and follow the principle of “just-in-time” inventory management.
“What’s on the ships coming in from the Far East is what is going to be available for Christmas and New Year’s shopping,” she said.
“Our members don’t have any inventory here now that could help retailers fill up shelves until this problem is solved.”
Dugan said if the port is not reopened within a week, “I believe we could see bankruptcies among our members as a result.”
The B.C. division of the Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters Canada also added its voice to the call for federal intervention.
“We would urge the federal government to get both sides in the dispute back to the negotiating table to resolve their differences through the collective-bargaining process,” said Alliance B.C. vice-president Werner Knittel.
The port of Vancouver is critical to Canada’s national transportation infrastructure and its operations must not be disrupted, he said.
The well-being of the country will suffer if the dispute is allowed to continue, said Knittel.
