With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1512670
29 BC BU S I N E S S .C A J A N U A R Y 2 0 24 i S t o c k /e nj o y n z ; t r a f f i c _ a n al y z e r Natural disasters and climate change: get used to it Wildfires and drought again disrupted industries including agriculture, forestry, transportation, tourism, energy and utilities in 2023, in what is becoming an increasingly familiar pattern. "Water is a big lingering issue for us," says Paul Pryce, director of policy for the B.C. Agricul- ture Council, a coalition of 28 different commodity-producing associations. The provincial government is working on a Watershed Security Strategy, but if getting by on less water is the new normal, invest- ment in better irrigation infrastructure and conversion to more drought-tolerant crops and methods of raising livestock will be required. B.C. has challenging terrain for building and maintaining infrastructure at the best of times—and more of it, on a per-capita basis, than most jurisdic- tions, Peacock says. That will continue to make the province uniquely vulnerable to natural disasters, whether or not they are related to climate change. The best governments and businesses can do is to invest in resilient infrastructure and learn adaptive responses. " B.C. has challenging terrain for building and maintaining infrastructure at the best of times—and more of it, on a per-capita basis, than most jurisdictions." W E S T P O R T F U E L S Y S T E M S Westport (TSX:WPRT) has always been a company longer on story than on results. David Johnson, who was hired as CEO in 2019 to "advance the strategic focus" of the low-carbon truck engine designer, departed suddenly this past August. Board member Tony Guglielmin is filling John- son's shoes for the time being. The stock, a consistent money loser for three decades, is holding up decently well, and analysts back its technology, but one wonders how many more kicks at the can this perennial next big thing has. W E S T F R A S E R T I M B E R West Fraser (TSX, NYSE:WFG) opted for continuity when it chose chief operating officer Sean McLaren to succeed Ray Ferris as CEO, effective January 1, 2024. McLaren's tenure with the company and its predeces- sors goes back 35 years, longer even than Ferris's. Still, investors wonder whether McLaren will simply consolidate and hone the expansions—most notably the acquisi- tion of Norbord in 2021—wrought by his predecessor or try to leave his own mark on Canada's largest and most reliably profit- able publicly traded forest company.