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Since May, B.C.’s Interior forest industry has been hit with a cascading series of sawmill production curtailments and permanent closures that have left some 3,000 workers at least temporarily out of work.

On Tuesday, Forest Minister Doug Donaldson held out a $69-million, short-term lifeline to many of those workers in the form of early-retirement assistance, job-placement services, retraining programs, and make-work projects for logging contractors.

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“We wanted to make sure we were tailoring programs to actual needs by hearing and listening to workers,” Donaldson said during the announcement in Prince George.

The measures, however, are only part of “a continuum,” Donaldson said, in dealing with a long-predicted rationalization of the industry driven by timber supplies that have been decimated by the mountain pine beetle infestation.

The minister acknowledged there will be more work to do, a point emphasized by unions. And B.C. Liberals criticized the government for taking so long and ignoring other measures at its disposal.