The Jasper Park Lodge played host to 550 forest industry personnel, suppliers, government representatives and guests at the Alberta Forest Products Association Annual General Meeting and Conference between September 28 and October 1st.

This article provides a synopsis of events and excerts from presentations made by His Worship, Richard Ireland, Mayor of the Town of Jasper, Hon. David Coutts, Minister of Sustainable Resource Development with the Government of Alberta, and Dr. Roger Gibbins, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canada West Foundation.

Copies of many of the presentations from the Conference are available on the AFPA website at: http://www.albertaforestproducts.ca/news_events/events.aspx?id=269. There are some technical glitches that we are working on, so if all the presentations are not up the first time you check, please check back in a few days.

The Alberta Forest Products Association is pleased to announce that Mr. Rob Layton has been named President for the 2005-2006 year. Layton is the General Manager, Prairie Region Solid Wood Operations with Tolko Industries Ltd., in High Level. Mr. Layton's appointment, and the Board of Directors election, was part of the AFPA's 63rd Annual General Meeting held on September 30th.

"The forest products industry is an important contributor to Alberta's economic, environmental, and social fabric," said Rob Layton, the new AFPA President. "To maintain and enhance this role requires us to be vigilant in continually improving our global market competitiveness, and I know the AFPA can play a part in helping our members achieve their successes."

As part of the Annual General Meeting and Conference, the AFPA recognized award winners in three categories - Health and Safety, FORESTCARE Certification, and Lumber Grading at a gala reception held at the Jasper Park Lodge on September 29, 2005

The Health and Safety awards, co-sponsored by Alberta Human Resources and Employment, recognize superior performance in forest industry health and safety. Recipients are chosen based upon a series of criteria that includes participation in the Partnership program, audit results, and on-the-job performance. The Excellence Awards are for 2004, while the Continuing Excellence Award is for top performers over a five-year period.

FORESTCARE was created by the AFPA, its members and community stakeholders in 1990. It was one of the first, third-party auditing programs related to forest management and operational practices. FORESTCARE is an ethic on which AFPA members conduct their business. It reflects a pledge by our member companies to lead progressive operations and continuously improve performance.

A lumber grade is the quality control standard, and is seen on every piece of Alberta-made dimensional lumber. Lumber grading is linked to building codes, safety codes and CSA standards. Skilled employees at the mill site inspect and grade each piece of lumber produced. The AFPA is the primary certification agency in Alberta, responsible for ensuring the quality control of each piece of stamped lumber originating from its members. Each year, the AFPA recognizes lumber graders that attain the highest certificate exam marks in four categories.

This fall, Albertans are being asked what they value most about their forests.

The Alberta Forest Usage Survey will offer every Albertan the opportunity to provide their views on how this province's forest lands should be managed, used, preserved and conserved.

The survey is Internet-based, and uses Nobel Prize winning market research technology (Discrete Choice Modeling) in order to determine the public's values and priorities in relation to the forest. The survey will provide a clear picture of what is important to citizens in granting a social license to operate in the public forests.

It is not your typical survey, as some of those who have already completed the survey will tell you, as it asks respondents to make trade offs between competing scenarios, neither of which is optimal.

www.yourforest.org

Brink Forest Products Ltd. announced on October 3, 2005 that it acquired Palliser Lumber Sales Ltd. of Crossfield, Alberta. The transaction will combine the two largest remanufacturers in BC and Alberta. Collectively the Brink Group of Companies will employ nearly 500 employees and will have a production capacity of 500 million board feet per year making it the largest remanufacturer of lumber products in Canada.

As part of its continuing Forest Industry Lecture Series, the University of Alberta will welcome Hank Ketcham, Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer of West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. to make the keynote address this year on November 3, 2005. This will be the 54th lecture in this series. Mr. Ketcham will speak on "The Alberta Forest Products Industry: Realizing the Potential of the 21st Century".

Government, community, and industry leaders joined Tolko Industries Ltd. (Tolko) to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Company's new Engineered Wood Products (EWP) facility in Slave Lake, Alberta, on Monday, September 26.

In his address, Tolko President and CEO Al Thorlakson noted that the company will have invested over $750 million once its value-added initiatives in Alberta operations are complete.

"Our initiatives include the agreement we've signed with Buchanan Lumber to develop a value added hardwood plant near High Prairie," said Thorlakson. "We hope to secure sufficient fibre to act on these plans in the near future."

Weyerhaeuser Company was named to two new Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes that track companies in terms of their economic, environmental and social performance, as of October 10, 2005.

The only forest products company listed in the category of Basic Resources: Forestry & Paper, Weyerhaeuser is one of 111 firms - 93 in the United States and 18 in Canada - listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability North American Index. The DJSI United States is the U.S. subset of the DJSI North America.

NEWS

Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd. (DMI) launches new website

NOTES

Al Caputo's Poem - I Chose to Look The Other Way - From the Health and Safety Awards during the AFPA Annual Recognition Evening

EVENTS

Air Emissions: Addresing Challenges for the Wood Insutry, November 14, 2005 - Grande Prairie

Trees to Dollars Workshop, November 15-16, 2005 - Grande Prairie

ForestEDWest II, January 26-29, 2006 - Banff Centre, Banff

Post-Harvest Stand Development Conference, January 31-February 1, 2006 - Edmonton

Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference: Fuels Management - How to Measure Success, March 27-30, 2006 - Portland, Oregon

Forest Leadership Forum 2006: Moving From Dialogue to Action, Presented by METAFORE INC., May 3-6, 2006 - Portland, Oregon

A Conference for the Boreal - In the Boreal

USE FORESTLINE TO HELP PROMOTE YOUR COMPANY NEWS, EVENT OR CONFERENCE