Highlighting the ongoing crisis in British Columbia's forest industry, labour and political leaders were scheduled to join a rally Monday in Kamloops to mark the closure of the Weyerhaeuser sawmill.
In February, a senior Weyerhaeuser official said the decision to close the mill and reassign the associated timber rights is attributable to the same market factors that have led to decisions to close 46 B.C. sawmills since January, according to the Forest Products Association of Canada.
They include high lumber inventories, poor U.S. markets and a soaring Canadian dollar. Those factors led Western Forest Products to lay off 1,000 forestry workers on Vancouver Island last week.
The decision to close the Kamloops mill, which has operated for the past 40 years, will affect nearly 200 workers.
Bob Taylor, general manager of Weyerhaeuser's BC operations, said the decision to close came only after the company examined a series of options including finding a buyer for the Kamloops mill.
