FOREST SERVICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1942, Page 5

FOREST SERVICE

MANPOWER PROBLEM IN CANADA. ENORMOUS DEMAND FOR TIMBER. The harvesting of Canada’s record crop during the present year has called for more men than are available, owing to the fact that the majority of farmers in the Dominion have lost their sons to the armed forces, an Ottawa correspondent wrote recently. In spite of this, the crops have been harvested, but there is a pressing need for storage of the grain which is required today, and which will be required in future for the nation’s needs. The principle laid down by the. National Selective Service Organisation is that only the very old and the very young shall be free from obligation to serve in this war. As its first major •‘industry-manning” job, the board will attempt to solve the Dominion’s pressing lumber problems by making 110,000 men available for pulp wood and lumber camp work throughout the Dominion. This work, of course, follows the harvesting season. . . The lumber industry is officially classed as an “essential” industiy, which, in the opinion of the Hon. C. D. Howe, Minister of Munitions and Supply, is facing the gravest shortage in its history. Accordingly, it has been arranged that 64,500 men will be allocated to the timber industry, during September; 30,000 men in October ,and an additional 27,000 men during November. The bulk of the men will be farmers, made available to the lumber camps owing to the agricultural off-season following harvest operations. The farmers will be moved to the camps on a voluntary basis. The campaign for the 110,009 men is expected to bring the present supply to bush camps up to 122,000 men by some time in November. Farmers throughout the Dominion will be involved, and the transfer to the bush will be made as convenient as possible. As the lumber demands are Dominion-wide farmers will be transferred to logging camps on a regional basis wherever' possible, and only where absolutely necessary will men be transferred beyond their own district. Staffing the lumber industry will be the first Canadian-wide assignment of the Selective Service Branch of the Labour Department, created last March. Previously the enlisting of some 3000 workers for defence projects in Newfoundland and the provision of labour for some short-handed base metal mines have been the biggest single jobs it has tackled. These, however, involved only problems in certain regions, while the need for lumber-men is nation-wide.

The shortage of lumber has been caused by a drop in production, coupled with “enormous war demands from the United Nations,” according to a statement made by Mr Howe. “There is a pressing need for timber for grain storage on western farms, while commitments for the remaining four months of the year call for a delivery of 1,040,000,000 feet for war purposes, three-quar-ters of which are for Britain, the United States, and the Allied nations.”