Tracks and Treads - Finning Canada

Three Times
a First Nations joint venture wows a
B.c. logging industry heavyweight,
sending critics running for cover
STory by ROBIN BRuNET
phoTography by DIGITAL B PHOTOGRAPHICS
FIVE FROM 3NV: Three Nations Ventures President Darrell Garbitt
(left) with four 3NV team leaders. From left to right: Mike Koosis,
Warren Garbitt, Art Walker and David Gentry. They proudly hold the
250,000 no time loss award
I
t’s June, three days before Three
Nations Ventures will receive
plaques from tembec,
a leader
in integrated forest products, and
Finning (canada) commemorating 250,000
consecutive person hours worked at the tem
-
bec Log Yard in chetwynd, British columbia,
with no time lost to on-the-job incidents.
tembec
mill manager Wayne
clement is enjoying
the moment. “I knew from the beginning
that three
Nations would be a success,”
he says. “But frankly, I didn’t think they would
achieve so much, so quickly.”
Operating consistently in a demanding
work environment with no major mishap is
indeed remarkable. But it’s just one facet of
the amazing progress made by a small group
of people who started with nothing five years
ago, and today preside over six contracts inte-
gral
to the tembec
Pulp Mill, which produces
500 air-dried metric tonnes of pulp daily. add
to this the fact that
three Nations Ventures
(more commonly known as 3NV) is comprised
mainly of saulteau, West Moberly and
Blueberry
river
First Nations band members,
and you have a genuine made-in-B.c. success
story that demonstrates the business capabilities
of the community as a whole.
tom
aird, a saulteau member who is
3NV’s accountant and human resources specialist,
echoes the sentiments of his colleagues
when he says: “I’m very proud of 3NV. It adheres
to old-fashioned values, and it succeeds
because of the mutual respect we have for each
other and for tembec
personnel. there
are no
prejudices here, just a collective desire to be
the best possible contractor.”
“to
repeat the quote of a band chief prior
to 3NV being formed,” Lyle Mortenson says,
“‘all we wanted was a hand up, not a hand
out.’” Mortenson is a non-native forestry consultant
for 3NV with lifelong experience as a
liaison between industry and First Nations.
“today,
our debt-to-equity ratio is one to five,
we always show a profit at year end. and
in addition
to our incident-free status, we’ve won
tembec
several awards [from cN rail]
for the
safe handling of smelt ash.”
at
any given time of the day, the tembec
log yard is a hive of activity, with as many as
100 trucks arriving daily on the property. three
Nations Ventures employs 33 people (twothirds
of whom are First Nations members) to
perform everything from scaling and unloading
to shunting and mill maintenance. every
year, the yard processes 450,000 cubic metres
of wood. cat 924 wheel loaders load smelt
into rail cars, while
325MHs stack logs in tall,
neat piles. the
feeding of the mill, which employs
160 people, is non-stop, and the yard
work far surpasses its predecessor, run by Louisiana-Pacific,
in terms of productivity.
the
venture’s success has roots not just in
the people of the region, but also in tembec’s
confidence in them. residents
of the area who
are involved in the project credit tembec
for
giving 3NV the “hand up” it was seeking. “to
call tembec
a model of a modern business
would be an understatement,” says aird. “In
fact, I’ve never come across another compa-
ny
like it, not just because it fosters First Nations
business involvement, but because it
genuinely treats us as equals.”
tembec’s
presence in
chetwynd dates back
to 2002, when delegates from Quebec arrived
to finalize purchase of the old Louisiana-Pacific
pulp mill and re-open the facility, which had
been closed for two years. tembec
arrived with
a long history of working with First Nations
across
canada, most notably in its sawmills in
northern Ontario and New Brunswick. so the
regional bands were excited by the prospect
of the Quebec-based forestry giant transforming
the Louisiana-Pacific mill, which was an
www.finning.ca Fall 2008 • tracks & treads 19