(Ottawa) The Bloc Québécois is calling for aid programs similar to those put in place during the first months of the pandemic to help the forestry industry. Forest fires are still raging in several regions of Quebec and could put the future of several businesses at risk.
“Normally, we experience periods when our operational activities intensify and there currently it is the opposite”, noted Benoît Lasalle, one of the founders of the Quebec Association of Forest Entrepreneurs, in a press briefing.
“We live in a bit of nothingness,” added the owner of Forestiers RBE Lasalle. We have no idea when we can return to the field to see the state of our machinery. »
The heavy equipment used to harvest wood remained in the forest when the forest fires broke out in the Côte-Nord, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Abitibi-Témiscamingue and Haute-Mauricie regions. The federal government has already warned that conditions will be favorable this summer for the outbreak of other fires.
“In the forestry sector, the people who carry out harvesting work in the forest, the people who are assigned to transport, to the opening of roads, all these people have very high fixed costs and currently their activities cannot restart,” argued Bloc Québécois MP Mario Simard.
“The best thing we can do right now is to put in place programs comparable to those we saw during COVID,” he continued.
He is calling for a reimbursement program for the loss of equipment with an insurance deductible of up to $50,000 per machine and a reimbursement of 75% for their maintenance, which has already been carried out at the start of the season and whose cost is estimated at $200,000.
A wage subsidy program could also help the forest industry retain employees who find themselves temporarily out of work.