VICTORIA - Carol Perron says she can't come right out and say it, but deep down she knows she's making plans for two deaths: Her husband's and her community's.
Perron lives in Mackenzie, a forest industry town in B.C.'s rugged north that's been dropped to its knees by a failing U.S. housing market and the strong Canadian dollar.
Most of Mackenzie's 4,700 residents are employed in the forest industry, but every sawmill in the surrounding area is shut down indefinitely and more than 1,200 people are out of work.
"I don't think we'll see a change here until about 2010," said Perron, echoing B.C. government forecasts that at least 18 months of hard times are ahead.
Perron said she and her husband, Jack, have lived in Mackenzie for 37 years. They raised four boys and dreamed of staying in the community, located about 185 kilometres north of Prince George, for the rest of their lives.
Now Jack, a former heavy equipment operator at the downed Canfor sawmill, is terminally ill and the economic prospects for Mackenzie are bleak. The Perrons are being forced to consider other plans, she said.
"It puts a halt in everything that you are looking forward to in terms of your retirement," she said. "We wanted to be the grandparents around our kids. This would be devastating because that would mean we would have to move."
Two sons have already left town, one for Saskatchewan and one for Vancouver Island.
One of her boys is employed in mining in Mackenzie, but another has been laid off since November, Perron said.
"They're trying to tough it out because they don't want to move," she said.
But her unemployed son and his family are "barely making it."
Mackenzie is considered ground zero of B.C.'s forest industry melt down due to its almost total dependence on forestry, but other communities are hurting as much as the pulp and lumber industry slowly grinds along.
Late last week, Western Forest Products, citing a soft U.S. market, announced it would shut down sawmills on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands for July and August, laying off almost 2,000 workers.
Hundreds of forest workers across British Columbia in Campbell River, Kamloops, Fort Nelson, Fort St. James and Grand Forks have been thrown out of work as sawmills and pulp mills announce shut downs or permanent closure.
On the heels of the softwood lumber dispute and the destruction of the Mountain pine beetle, the current market conditions have been devastating.
B.C. Forests Minister Rich Coleman said the government doesn't have the ability to flick a magic switch that brings back jobs, but it can attempt to ensure the B.C. forest industry is competitive and viable in the coming decades.
He's been taking heat from unions and the New Democratic Opposition, who say the government hasn't done enough. Coleman maintains the government will not use tax dollars to prop up ailing sawmills.
Economics professor Cornelis van Kooten is equally blunt.
"Unfortunately, there's very little you can do other than handouts, and you don't want to do that," said the professor at the University of Victoria, who describes himself as a right-leaning environmentalist.
Van Kooten said B.C.'s forest industry will survive, but it needs to become more efficient to stay in business and rural communities like Mackenzie need to look at economic opportunities other than forestry if they want a future.
"The bigger thing is, what kind of shape is that forest industry going to be? Is it going to be a lean mean machine for generating economic wealth or is it going to stagger along as an old man; creating jobs or trying to hold jobs that are being lost on a daily basis?" he said.
Communities dependent on forestry must need to face up to reality: An efficient industry means fewer jobs, van Kooten said.
"You're in an industry where you've got to be efficient, and efficiency means you've got to shed jobs, and if you're shedding jobs then you're community isn't as big," said van Kooten.
He said the B.C. government has decided to plan for the future rather than offer bailouts.
"The Liberals, their attitude is, we're due and, let's let it hit," said van Kooten. "We'll try and soften the impact where we can, but basically, there's nothing we can do."
Opposition New Democrat forest critic Bob Simpson agrees that problems in the U.S. economy have hurt B.C.'s forest industry, but disagrees with the government's hands-off policy.
"We need a strategy from the province, and it's something that the forests minister, in a normal environment, with a normal forests minister, would roll up his bloody sleeves, call the industry together and sit down and say, 'We've got to figure this out boys,"' said Simpson.
He said the government should have controlled the amount of timber shipped to the U.S. markets in an effort to keep the entire industry running on a reduced basis, as opposed to shutdowns, layoffs and closures.
"You all go to three-day shifts," Simpson said. "We'll work with the federal government and we'll top you up on the two days for your wages. Then, every community is taking that hit. It keeps the mills and the machines running. Then Mackenzie doesn't lose 1,500 people, and Fort. St. James, and Grand Forks is completely down."
The United Steelworkers Union, which represents many of B.C.'s forest workers, says B.C. has lost 20,000 forest-industry jobs since 2001 when the Liberals were elected.
The union issued a 10-point plan last March that was immediately rejected by the Liberal government because it called for the abrogation or reform of the hard-won Canada-U.S. Softwood Lumber Agreement.
Back in Mackenzie, Dale Parker, a supervisor at the idled AbitibiBowater (TSX:ABH) sawmill, said Mackenzie will likely see changes, but the forest industry will never die there and neither will the town.
"The wood basket we've got up here in Mackenzie, it's one of the best in the province," he said. "It's got more long-term life in it than probably anywhere in the province. Really, it's just a matter of when."
Parker, 41, has lived in Mackenzie for 21 years. He started working on the sawmill floor and worked himself up to a management position.
"Until I have to move, and I don't plan on moving," he said.
