BC Forest Minister Parmar tours Interior ahead of legislature showdown with Kamloops MLA Stamer during estimates

KAMLOOPS — British Columbia’s newest minister of forests is on a tour this week of interior communities, completing stops in Kelowna, Salmon Arm, and Vernon before a visit to the regional office in Kamloops on Wednesday (March 19) afternoon.

Ravi Parmar is the youngest cabinet minister in B.C., with the MLA from Langford taking over the crucial forestry file.

“Don’t assume a 30-year-old kid from Langford doesn’t know forestry, I’m learning each and every day,” Parmar told CFJC News. “The real important thing is there is people all across British Columbia that are ready to lift me up and give me a helping hand.”

“And Ward [Stamer] doesn’t have to worry, we are going to get a lot of shit done in our time in this role.”

Stamer, the MLA for Kamloops-North-Thompson, serves as the BC Conservative’s Forest Critic. He told CFJC that he wants to see more action from his counterpart.

“We have to diversify our markets, we want to be able to continue to grow our market, but we also need access to fiber, and that has been our number one concern that we have had through this whole thing,” said Stamer. “We have had mills closing before the threat of tariffs, a lot of it was uncertainty of fiber supply. We need to make sure the minister is looking at changing government policy and making sure there is more fiber available for our mills.”

“Ward and others are going to want some action, but before one should act they should be doing a lot of listening and learning,” responded Parmar.

As part of his tour of forestry sites in the Interior, Parmar has been speaking with people on the ground facing the possibility of U.S. tariffs, on top of current softwood lumber duties, which when combined could surpass 50 per cent this summer.

“My job is to get the sector back on it’s feet, and we are going to be fighting the United States government that they are aware that this tariff, the duties, don’t just hurt British Columbians, they are very much a tax on middle class Americans as well. And Americans are finally starting to speak up and share that with their president,” said Parmar.

One area that Parmar and Stamer seem to agree on is the need to improve and speed up the process to harvest burnt fiber.

“Case in point was the 2023 fire at Adams Lake, they are just getting going in the last three four months, it should have been the first season,” Stamer said. “Alberta is able to do it in sometimes eight days after the fire is put out. I don’t know what is taking so long and I’m hoping the minister is going to do what he said he’s going to do and get us access to that fiber quicker.”

Critic Stamer and minister Parmar are set to face in the legislature over the next few weeks during ministerial budget estimates.