The Provincial Government has made some updates to the Forests Act.
Agriculture and Forestry Minister Devin Dreeshen was on the Trending 55 Hot Seat and says it’s the first changes that have been made to the Act since the early 70’s.
“A really important change in it for forestry companies is the removal of redundant licence requirements. Previously, they had to have two licences which really were duplicative and a great example of red tape that didn’t actually add any value to the province or to the lumber companies as well.”
Dreeshen says they’ve also increased transparency on how timber dues are calculated.
He also add that the changes they’ve made will make Alberta more competitive for global investments in forestry products.
“We’ve seen to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of capital investments in our forestry sector and there’s hundreds of millions more now on the horizon for the province. You don’t have to look very far, just to the West of us (in BC), where governments that over-regulate a forestry industry in ways that just don’t make sense.”
You can listen to our full Hot Seat interview with Dreeshen below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
