State Of The Industry - Fall 2024 / Winter 2025

Another planting season is essentially over.  For me, the 2024 season reinforced three universal truths:

1.      Nothing is certain in life except death and taxes.

2.      Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

3.      The tree price can never be high enough in Fort St John.

Looking ahead to 2025, here are some thoughts that I have on topics that may be of interest to planters.

 

Planting Volumes & Pricing

Across Canada, it seems that tree planting totals will continue to rise in 2025.  The 2 Billion Tree program continues to grow, as expected, although the vast majority of national planting volume is still very much tied to harvesting activity.

British Columbia is a provincial exception to the growth curve.  Volumes in BC are expected to drop next year, allegedly from 291 million to 233 million trees (a drop of 58 million trees or twenty percent).  In theory, you’d think that this would lead to a supply and demand imbalance, which would then result in lower bid prices for next year’s contracts.  In practice, we’re not seeing any consistent trend of that sort, at least not so far.  Planting company owners and bidding personnel are dealing with significant cost pressures, and don’t have much flexibility to bid aggressively.

The big question that’s always on planters’ minds is what direction tree prices are moving in.  My guess is that in 2025, they’ll remain almost exactly the same as in 2024.  There are two opposing forces at play here ... supply reductions versus labour force reliability.  It’s very unlikely that planters will see any broad price increases in BC, due to the expected drop in volume.  At the same time, companies will be reluctant to drop planter prices, because planters might try to jump to other companies.

Companies are in a difficult position.  They need to maintain planter prices, despite other rising costs and despite a potential slight drop in bid prices at the company level.  Experienced planters are more valuable than new workers, and companies don't want planters to retire and move out of the industry to other careers.  To be honest, if our industry can maintain planter prices at status quo going into 2025, we’ll be luckier than other forestry sectors that are dealing with massive job cuts.  The planting workforce in BC will certainly be smaller in 2025, but it’s easy for our industry to downsize quickly since we have so much turnover every year.  Several of the larger companies will probably consider downsizing by a full camp, which is usually pretty easy to do, and which strengthens the remaining camps.

 

Retiring Owners

In past years, I sometimes referred to the Big 14 planting companies in BC:  Apex, Blue Collar, Brinkman, Celtic, Coast Range, Dynamic, Folklore, NATA, NGR, Rhino, Seneca, Spectrum, Summit, and Windfirm.  While this group doesn’t include all of the largest companies (it omits companies such as Zanzibar), I tended to cluster this group together because they probably account for nearly 90% of the hiring of first-time inexperienced planters.

Until recently, it had been a long while since any of the biggest planting companies ceased operations, with the two most notable examples in the past 25 years probably being SilvaRam (2005) and Nechako (2010).  However, Celtic shuttered their planting operations last year (although that company still does other forestry work at a smaller scale).  At least two other mid-sized companies also ceased operations going into the 2024 season (Little Smokey & Nature's Treasures).

For 2025, I’m aware of two more companies from that big group which will not be planting anymore (although one of the two may rebuild as a smaller operation with a different name).  In addition, another well-known smaller company is apparently done.

What does all of this recent turnover mean?  Is it significant that six companies have shut down in the past 18 months?  It feels to me that this is the market sending a signal that running a planting company just may not be worth it.  On a positive note, the timing of this contraction matches well with the current decrease in volumes.  Convenient.  Keep in mind however, some other small companies have sprung up in the past two years, which will partially offset the reduction in the size of the industry.

 

Forestry Outlook in BC

It’s not just the planting industry that is contracting.  There have been major upsets in mills throughout BC.  Twenty years ago, there were slightly over a hundred operational mills throughout the province.  The count is now down to just barely over half that number.

Canfor has been hit especially hard.  After closing four mills in 2023, they recently announced the closures of their sawmills in Vanderhoof and Fort St. John.  Canfor has now closed ten of their thirteen BC mills over the past several years.

Province-wide, mills are cutting a lot less.  This is due to a slew of reasons, including fallout from a few decades of mountain pine beetle and other insect damage, several recent bad wildfire seasons, and also due to the remaining “good wood” being further and further from mills (which of course increases hauling and other costs).  Lack of access to economic fibre is a big problem.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise, in light of all these recent mill curtailments and the accompanying downtrend in harvesting, that planting volumes will also drop.

What will this do to the composition of the planting workforce?  As long as tree prices don’t decrease, the industry should see a "normal" return rate of experienced planters in 2025.  If this is the case, but we also consider the likelihood that the number of trees being planted will drop, we can deduce that there should be fewer seats available.  This reduction will affect inexperienced applicants, not planters with previous planting experience.

I suspect that the number of “rookies” hired will drop significantly in 2025 compared to 2024.  Companies will have the luxury of being more selective about whom they hire.  International applicants will have a much harder time finding planting jobs, because it will be easier for companies to fill positions with promising Canadian applicants.  Most companies prefer to hire Canadians, because they want employees who might still around for 3-5 seasons, and that’s not possible for a lot of the international applicants due to visa restrictions.  If you're a rookie who is interested in becoming a planter in BC this year, the application process is going to be a lot more competitive than during the past few years.

Recent Elections

The BC election was not resolved quickly.  Ultimately, a number of seats were decided by only a few hundred votes each.  The NDP government won 47 seats, the bare minimum needed for a majority, although this wasn’t certain until several days after the election.  The Green Party wound up with two seats.  It initially appeared that the Greens would be able to decide who would form a coalition government, until the NDP got the last seat they needed during the recounts a week after election night.  But that doesn’t mean that the NDP party can govern unchecked.  If they lose a single MLA, either in a by-election or due to a defection, they will need to turn to the Green Party to maintain power.  Any NDP MLA could switch parties to the Greens right now, and force a coalition government.  That would give that particular MLA and the other two Green MLA's outsized influence.  It will be a precarious political situation for the next few years.  On a positive note for tree planters, the NDP alluded to supporting the planting of 300 million trees per year if elected.  If any readers happen to know any of the NDP (or Green) MLA’s, reach out to them and remind them that you want their support for more planting in BC.

Looking south, the US elections were a bit of a surprise/shock to some.  With Trump coming back into power soon, the most obvious likely result will be inflation due to the fiscal policies Republicans are expected to follow.  Trump also mentioned "protecting Americans" with tariffs.  If he moves ahead with that plan, there is a good chance that tariffs would increase on Canadian lumber.  That would have a disproportionate negative impact on forestry in BC in particular.  When BC’s forestry sector is unhealthy, the reforestation sector is obviously also affected.  Between tariffs and inflation, we could eventually see less harvesting (which results in lower planting volumes), and higher prices on things like trucks and vehicle parts.  Thankfully, it will probably be at least 18 months before any inflationary increases or spin-offs from lumber tariffs impact the planting industry, so that’s more of a worry for 2026 than for 2025.

 

Safety & First Aid

WorkSafe has introduced sweeping new first aid requirements for remote forestry workers in BC.  These requirements came into effect on November 1^st.  I’ll provide a link where you can learn about this in more detail, but the basic situation is that the industry will need more first aiders.  Course names and content have also been modified.  Existing first aid certificates will remain valid until their intended expiry dates, but planters renewing tickets will see some changes in their courses.

In addition to probably needing significantly more ticketed first aid attendants, there have been updates to required contents for first aid kits and dressing stations, and to hazard ratings for various worksites.  You can find more info here:

https://www.replant.ca/docs/Nov_2024_First_Aid_Backgrounder.pdf

ETV’s are also under fire right now.  There are approximately six different types of ETV’s in use at planting companies throughout the province.  You can find everything from MTC’s to crummies to suburbans with fold-down seats, and the silver aluminum worker transport units that fit into the back of open-back pickups.  Unfortunately, WorkSafe has basically identified potential problems with every single type of unit that is currently in use at planting companies.  This is a situation which is evolving right now, but it could result in significant additional costs this winter/spring for many companies, large or small.

 

Total Physio

This company, based out of Houston BC, is well known to many planters.  A large number of planting companies hire Total Physio to provide various services and resources to their planters.  Total Physio’s library of taping resources is now up to 44 subjects, and growing.  Great stuff.

 

Alternatives to ATV’s

There’s been a lot of talk about situations where road access has been reclaimed, making the use of ATV's very dangerous.  What about using dirt bikes or electric fat bikes?  A drawback is stability safety, and another drawback is that they can basically only permit a tree runner to move one box at a time.  However, bikes can travel into some areas that a quad can’t access.  I once had an entire crew that used mountain bikes to get to their blocks on one of my contracts.  Think outside the box.  I’m going to be using e-bikes to plant a reclaimed road project in Nova Scotia this week.  Check out my Instagram account in a few days to see the fun:  www.instagram.com/replant.ca

 

Bid Results

I normally track all public bid results for BC planting contracts on the Replant.ca forums.  Some of you have noticed that I’m running late this year.  There have been more than half a dozen jobs that have opened already, so mea culpa.  However, I now measure my to-do list in years rather than pages, and I’ve been busy non-stop since the spring.  I promise that I'll get around to summarizing and posting everything shortly.

To be fair, this year’s viewing and bidding season is running very late, perhaps close to a month later than normal.  There will be a slew of contracts opening in the next three weeks (mid- to late November).  As I said, I'll get around to analyzing and sharing everything soon.

Thanks for reading ...

- Scooter

 

 

Links to Previous "State Of The Industry" Posts:

Early 2024:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2024/01/state-of-industry-winter-2024.html

Fall 2022:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2022/10/state-of-industry-fall-2022-tree.html

Fall 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/10/state-of-industry-fall-2021-bc-tree.html

Spring 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/04/state-of-industry-2021.html

Fall 2019:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-industry-2019-bc-tree-planting.html

Fall 2018:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2018/09/state-of-industry-british-columbia-tree.html

State of the Industry, Fall 2021 (BC Tree Planting)

Here we go again.  Viewing season has started in western Canada, with companies looking at contracts for 2022, and submitting bids.  What better time than now to comment on the state of the Canadian reforestation industry?

There are half a dozen main issues that I should comment upon:  Safety, inflation, industry volumes for 2022, tree prices, Covid, forest fires, and the 2021 Heat Wave.

 

Health & Safety

I could write an entire essay just about health & safety, but in the interests of keeping things short, I’ll summarize.  And I’ll address Covid separately.

Fatigue continues to be a problem for the industry.  This is especially apparent at the management level.  While a planter’s day is usually done at dinner, this is rarely the case for management at any level.  Company owners and upper-level managers need to continue trying to avoid letting camp and crew leaders work themselves to exhaustion.

Bear safety has been a regular tailgate topic for many years, but the issue really came into the spotlight at the end of July when a support staff working with a helicopter crew near Whitecourt was killed by a black bear who dragged her away from the staging area during planting operations.  Even though some types of accidents are incredibly rare (such as those relating to danger trees, wildlife attacks, and lightning), the risks cannot be ignored.

New OH&S reg are about to be released in British Columbia.  This may increase the number of OFA3’s that are required in the workplace.  However, this hasn’t been finalized.  If more OFA3's are required, this course will become an increasingly valuable addition to one's resume.

It appears that many companies are putting an increased emphasis on acknowledging mental health issues in the workplace.  Psychological first aid training courses are becoming more common, as is access to professional counselling.  I hope that such resources and initiatives continue to become more common.

 

Inflation

If you hadn’t paid attention, inflation is running hot these days.  You’re probably noticing this at the gas pumps if you’re a driver.  I was seeing prices of over $1.60 per liter in southern BC this week.  Imagine what prices will be next summer, considering that oil prices are expected to continue to rise.  Compare the price per liter with what fuel cost in the 2020 planting season, and you’ll see that fuel costs are going to have jumped by as much as 50% to 80% in a two-year period (admittedly, the prices in 2020 were a bit low due to Covid).  We certainly may see gasoline and diesel at $2/liter or more by the time next year’s planting season rolls around.  The global energy crisis is just starting to be felt in Canada.

Look at food costs.  The global food price indices are up around 30% year-over-year right now, based upon basic food commodity pricing.  But what does that translate to at the grocery store?  Well, various sources are suggesting that grocery prices in Canada are up by about 4-7% overall in 2021, compared to 2020.  And that upward trend is expected to continue.

Supply chain issues are also becoming more of a problem by the month, thanks to dozens of industries either underestimating or overestimating global consumption patterns when Covid was ramping up in 2020.  Right now, it’s almost impossible to buy new ATV’s, side-by-sides, or full-sized pickups.  I bought a new Jeep Wrangler (base model) in 2017 for $26k.  It now has forty thousand kilometers on it, and I could currently sell it for $35k.  One major truck rental agency recently sold all of it’s 2019 trucks.  Why?  Because after renting them in 2019, 2020, and 2021, they were able to sell them for fifteen percent more than they paid for them originally.  A lot of truck parts are also becoming very hard to find, including basics like air filters.  If a truck develops mechanical problems in 2022, it might be stuck at a repair shop for the remainder of the season.  Will planting companies have spare trucks to keep their fleets running?  Anything short of a 350 doesn’t have enough power to carry anything more than crew and a quad.  This is a flashback to the 90’s, but some planters may end up losing days of work due to vehicle downtime.  Vehicle costs (above and beyond fuel costs) are going to rise dramatically in 2022.

Real estate prices are up (not that many planters can afford to buy houses).  Tuition prices are up.  Retail prices are up.  If you’re an Amazon customer, go into your past orders and look at something that you bought 12-24 months ago, and check the current selling price.  Three-quarters of the things that I bought on Amazon in 2019 and 2020 have increased in price by 20-30%.

Wages need to rise to follow inflation.  Will planting companies bid higher this fall?  It’s hard to say.  Many companies that I’ve spoken to hope to factor 5% price increases into bids.  But will they have the resolve to do that?  I guess we’ll know in two months.

 

Industry Volumes for 2022

The Western Forestry Contractors’ Association recently held on online Market Summit.  I was flying at the time, and didn’t have the opportunity to watch the presentations in real time.  However, some of the presentations are online now.  Visit this page to find them:

   https://wfca.ca/2021/10/wfca-rumour-mill-roundupdate-volume-21-issue-12/

British Columbia is allegedly going to have a slight drop in overall planting numbers for 2022, with the total number of trees decreasing by about twenty million seedlings.  This isn’t entirely a bad thing.  It will let the industry catch its breath compared to two back-to-back record years in 2019 and 2020 (which were slightly more than 300 million trees each year).

A decrease of twenty million trees seems like a lot.  However, that’s only a decrease of about 7% from the levels of the past two years.  And considering that there were a number of significant contract extensions this year, and some non-completions, it’s obvious that the industry is still running very much near capacity.  On top of this, the numbers above don’t reflect additional planting that is coming on-stream from other non-traditional sources, such as oil&gas and environmental projects.

I don't want to appear to contradict the WFCA's analysis of future volumes, but they are obliged to rely on solid verifiable data, and that's a weakness.  Their analysis shows a slow decline in volumes for the next several years.  This is understandable, considering the data that they have to work with.  However, I think they're currently forced to neglect two major factors in their analysis:  2021 Wildfires, and the 2021 Heat Wave.  More on these subjects below.

I expect the industry drop in volume for 2022 to be temporary.  Demand will be pushing the limits again in 2023.

Tree Prices

What can planters expect for tree prices in 2022?  Well, in theory, we’d like to see slight increases, to counter the effects of general price inflation.  Unfortunately though, I think we’ll see that pricing will remain stagnant.  I’d like to think otherwise, but I’m being realistic here.

Most of the industry participants (planting company owners and upper management) understand the need to increase bid prices due to inflation.  Most participants know that Covid costs are not included in this year’s numbers, and unlike last year, needed to be added on top of bid prices.  Most participants are involved in broad discussions (such as the recent WFCA Market Summit), and know that they as a group are responsible for the fiscal health of the entire planting industry.

In 2021, the average bid price on all of the “easy” northern Interior government contracts last year was 48.73 cents per tree.  But there was also an automatic 8.6% added onto these [camp-based] contracts for Covid costs, so the true bid price was around 52.92 cents per tree.  If 5% inflation (and a component for Covid) is added this year, then one would hope that the winning bids for northern Interior work average out to around 55.4 cents.  If bids are lower than this, the bottom line at the planting companies will be what suffers the most.  The ball is in the contractors' court here.  If a company tries to low-ball a few bids then drop planter prices to maintain profitability, they will lose planters to competitors.  The labour market is very tight these days.

 

Covid

I can say with complete certainty that we’re all getting pretty sick of hearing about Covid by now.  And yet, people are still dying, so we can’t ignore it.  In the coming months, company owners will have to make tough decisions about operating parameters for 2022.  For the past two seasons, the camp-based companies made the decision to keep planters in camp on days off, but also to provide meals and laundry services on those days.  Will companies continue to absorb those costs if bid prices don’t support the cost?  Or will planters be free to go to town again?  And if that’s the case, how many cases of Covid will come back to the camps with them?  At least three major companies started to let their planters travel into the local communities in July of this year, and subsequently had to deal with Covid cases among their crews (this was in addition to the two other companies that had Covid outbreaks in the spring).  We want our freedom, but we also want safety.  Where is the balance?

Vaccinations will also be a hot topic in the coming months.  Company owners have also been discussing this issue.  My belief is that a lot of companies will require all employees to be double-vaccinated in 2022 as a condition of employment.  The vast majority of planters are already vaccinated anyway, so this mandate wouldn’t bother most people in that subset of the workforce.  Many planters have said that they’d prefer for their workforces to be 100% vaccinated, because that will presumably grant greater freedoms.

Planters who are not and do not wish to be vaccinated will be vocal in their frustration about these policies.  Some planting companies may specifically decide against vaccination policies, in hopes of capturing a larger group of [non-vaccinated] experienced planters who are looking for new homes.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  Considering that the majority of current cases are among unvaccinated people, will any vaccinated planter want to work at a company that doesn’t require vaccinations?  In theory, the risk of Covid outbreaks will be significantly higher at those companies.

 

Forest Fires

The wildfire season is essentially over.  After two record-breaking fire years in 2017 and 2018, British Columbia saw two very quiet years in 2019 and 2020.  But 2021 was another bad year.  By September 30^th, approximately 868,000 hectares had burned throughout the province, which is more than twenty times the wildfire land base of the previous two years put together (2019 and 2020 combined only saw 36,000 Ha burned).

The past few years have seen improvements for tree planters in comparison to historical earnings from the previous decade.  This was solely due to the 2017/2018 wildfire activity.  There was strong demand for planters, as the forest industry and the province tried to fix some of the damage from the massive wildfires of those two years.  That work will continue in 2022 and beyond.

Many people assume that planting of areas burned by wildfires can happen within days or weeks.  That’s not the case.  Post-fire reforestation is very complicated, with complex timelines.  For the next several months, foresters are going to be assessing the damage in their regions.  Long-term planning starts to happen.  Budget decisions need to happen, to figure out where to find money to restore burned forests.  A lot of that funding originates from government, which typically doesn’t move as fast as industry.  However, there is one other significant delay – procurement of seedlings.  Canada’s nurseries are operating near capacity.  Even when nurseries have space to grow trees, seed must be allocated, and then the seedlings need to be grown.  All of this takes a lot of time.  Although a bit of 2021’s burned ground will undoubtedly be planted in 2022, most of the planting really won’t start in earnest until the spring of 2023.  I expect to see record-breaking volumes in 2023, if the nurseries can supply enough seedlings.

 

Heat Wave

This is a story that hasn't been discussed widely as of late, perhaps because it's such a sad story.  The heat wave appears to have caused widespread seedling mortality.  Actually, "widespread mortality" is a strong understatement.  The western Canadian heat wave in late June and early July killed an incredible number of seedlings throughout BC and Alberta.  I've visited several plantations this week where not a single [2021] seedling survived, not even the trees hidden in the shade.  There was nothing wrong with the stock or with the planting quality.  The heat (and several weeks without appreciable moisture in the soil) just toasted them.  I'll post a photo at the bottom of this essay to show an example of a fir seedling that was perfectly planted behind a large obstacle (northeast side), and perfectly protected from the hot southwest afternoon sun.  However, it didn't survive.  Nor did any of the hundreds of thousands of other trees (multiple species) on the same block.

I'm hearing similar reports from several parts of BC and even into northern Alberta.  I've never seen anything like this.  It's incredibly disheartening.  I don't think the industry has ever experienced anything like this.  I hope I'm overestimating, but it may be that more than 25% of the trees planted this year have experienced cataclysmic failure.  With over 400 million seedlings planted in Western Canada this year, more than a hundred million may have died in the heat wave.  It's going to take years for some regions to recover from this.  And again, depending on funding, this is one more reason why the industry will need to run at full speed in 2023 and beyond.

 

Conclusions

After two record-setting years, it probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing to have a “normal” busy year.  Fatigue continues to be an issue for the industry (especially on the management side), and a lot of owners and camp supervisors would be happy to have a less challenging season in 2022.  Despite this, the number of trees to be planted is still very high by historical standards.  Let’s hope that everyone gets a lot of rest this winter.

I'll update this post in February 2022, to reflect upon the results of the fall 2021 bidding season.

- Scooter

www.replant-environmental.ca

Links to Previous "State Of The Industry" Posts:

Spring 2021:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2021/04/state-of-industry-2021.html

Fall 2019:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-industry-2019-bc-tree-planting.html

Fall 2018:  https://jonathan-scooter-clark.blogspot.com/2018/09/state-of-industry-british-columbia-tree.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

State of the Industry, Spring 2021

As I write this, my camp is preparing to mobilize in just 24 hours for the start our tree planting season.  I’ve been working on this post sporadically for a few months, but until now I didn’t feel that it was the “right time” to publish an annual commentary.  I was hoping that Covid would be on the decline by the time Interior operations got started, and that I’d be able to provide a postmortem.  Instead, the next few months will be more challenging than 2020.

Review of the 2020 Season

Let’s look back at the 2020 season for a few minutes.  In retrospect, we’re in an advantageous situation right now.  Compared to 2020, we’re almost properly prepared to commence field operations.  On this date twelve months ago, we didn’t even know if there would be a tree planting season.  It wasn’t until Sunday night, April 19^th (2020) that I sensed we’d be allowed to mobilize, and I rapidly sent out an email to my crews to tell them that it was worth gambling on booking their flights.  Fast forward to today, and our planning looks very different.  We have plans in place to deal with many different Covid-related contingencies, whereas last year we were flying by the seat of our pants.

We were lucky in 2020.  Not a single camp had a known case of Covid.  And that’s what matters the most, because at the end of the season, it’s not a healthy bank account that matters – it’s the health of the employees.  Can we do the same this year?

Another notable thing about 2020 was that prices continued to trend slightly upward, extending the recovery that started the previous year.  While there’s always more room for upward growth, it seemed that more workers considered their wages to be fair, and when they returned home at the end of the season, they were more likely to tell friends that the job “wasn’t so bad.”

By the fall, owners were feeling very relieved.  Many of them had been staring at the prospect of potential bankruptcy, but the lack of Covid in the camps meant that all the planting companies survived, and will continue operating in 2021.

As viewing season rolled around, the only notable excitement was a very strange policy shift by the provincial government, which saw some MOFLNROD and BCTS offices hiding submitted bid numbers on their public tenders.  It is regrettable that, absent a Freedom of Information Act request, agencies playing with the public purse feel that they should not be held accountable for sharing information about major costs. This of course wasn’t the case at every office.

In the end, it didn’t matter.  Although collusion before a bid is opened would be illegal, there are no restrictions about talking about bids that have already opened.  Almost all of the planting contractors in the industry got together and shared their numbers (behind the scenes) after each bid was opened, and we had a very good ongoing picture of where the bids were trending.  In the end, I believe that this policy of non-disclosure probably worked against the government agencies, rather than in their favour.

By the way, the industry planted it's nine billionth tree in British Columbia in 2020!  That means that there will be a big milestone coming up in 2023.

Covid

Everyone is pretty sick of hearing about Covid, so I won’t dwell on it.  However, it’s the obvious elephant in the room, so I can’t skip over it.

The government has been a leader in ensuring that incremental Covid-related costs do not force a significant portion of the sector into bankruptcy.  Licensees have followed, albeit some with reluctance (despite the forest industry’s record-high lumber prices).  Known costs (extra staffing and supplies) have been addressed on a cost-sharing basis between industry and clients, with some help from various levels of government.

However, one very significant issue remains, and that relates to the expectation of significant incremental costs when Covid gets into camps.  Notice that I said “when,” not “if.”  The industry has approximately 80 mobile tent camps, most of whom house anywhere from thirty to a hundred planters or more.  Based upon the prevalence of Covid within the general population, the odds that an infected worker comes into camp are approximately thirty times higher now than they were in 2020.  I’ve already heard of numerous planters who have tested positive in the past two weeks, and it is obvious that a number of planting camps are going to experience case clusters this season.  With the recent PHO orders indicating that a PHO shutdown is possible for any cluster of three or more cases, this means that some camps will almost certainly be shut down for 14-day circuit breakers this season, which means that project completion dates will have to be pushed back.

Nobody is talking about it right now, but I feel that the season will necessarily need to be extended this year, as companies attempt to help each other catch up on missed deadlines.  Of course, this will be entirely dependent on exactly how the PHO approaches their shutdown protocols.  It will be a tricky situation, because a camp that has a cluster of cases can’t just drive into the local community and book motel rooms for two weeks.  They’ll have to remain sequestered in the bush, and it will be necessary for employers to continue feeding and taking care of workers.

Testing has been brought up repeatedly as one part of a mitigation strategy.  It would be great if the industry had widespread access to rapid-result tests that could be administered to the entire workforce every three days for the first three weeks of the season.  However, resources don’t currently exist to support that strategy.

Vaccinations are also on everyone’s wish lists.  Although they wouldn’t be mandatory, enough planters would seek to be vaccinated that the camps would essentially reach herd immunity.  However, considering the length of the season, and the time that it takes for administered vaccines to build immunity within individuals, that strategy would lose most of its impact unless it could be pulled off in the first half of May.  Even then, it takes time for the vaccination to kick in, and workers are not “fully” immunized until after a second dose.  Regardless, vaccinations would still be very beneficial to most individuals, as evidence seems to indicate that even after a first dose, persons who still manage to contract Covid generally don’t get as sick.

The PHO has an evolving vaccination strategy that is currently targeting some hot spots in specific communities and industrial work sites.  But will that extend to BC’s forty-five hundred tree planters, or will they be forgotten in the woods?  I’m sure that a few other provinces are grappling with the same problem, although it seems that BC is the only province that recognizes its tree planters as a culturally unique and economically significant workforce.  Also, many planters are from out-of-province, and remain concerned about vaccine eligibility while working for British Columbia. 

 

Safety

We’ve seen big improvements over the past six months in the ways that many companies are addressing the prevention of bullying and harassment.  This is a major shift that got a foothold after the January 2020 WFCA Conference, but which was partially derailed by Covid a few months later.  However, I’m now seeing a much better understanding throughout the industry of the need to address the prevalence of harassment.  And certainly, the industry’s tolerance for inappropriate behaviour is much lower now than it has been in the past.  Many companies have also realized that while gender parity is very close to being achieved at a planter level, there is still a woeful inadequacy of women in upper management and at the ownership level.  That can’t be changed overnight, but we need to challenge ourselves to change that weakness in the next three years.

Mental Health is being recognized more than ever before.  Covid helped to kick-start that revolution, as companies became acutely aware of the challenges that planters had to deal with in isolation camps.  Again, that’s an area which is seeing improvement.  A number of the larger companies have been offering psychological first aid courses to all levels of management, and there is current talk about industry-wide support programs such as one potential program that Tim Tchaida and other WFCA members are examining.

Finally, back to Covid, our society has a better familiarity with constant use of masks.  While that won’t make 2021 any more enjoyable than 2020, it won’t feel so unfamiliar to be wearing masks constantly in camps and trucks.  And while there are always some planters that disagree with mask rules, and resist the concept of testing and vaccinations, the majority of the workforce recognizes that we need to work together for our own individual good.  If planters are careless coming into the season, it’s not just their own health that is at risk.  The bigger risk is a shutdown of their crew or camp.  As with masks, you don’t follow the rules to protect yourself; you follow them to protect everyone around you.

I’ve talked to more than a dozen other supervisors over the past few weeks.  We all recognize that the inevitable outbreaks in our camps will mean that this season will be a lot more challenging than in 2020, we understand the challenges.

Let’s get to work …

 

Previous SOTI posts:

September 2018

September 2019