Region Archives: Canada East

Blaine Higgs

FREDERICTON – New Brunswick’s premier will meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Premier Blaine Higgs said softwood lumber will be front-and-centre during the meeting Monday in Ottawa. Higgs said softwood lumber was not a factor in the new free trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico. …For more than two years, softwood lumber entering the U.S. from Canada have been subject to tariffs. But Higgs said imports from Europe, which are not subject to tariffs, are “pouring in” to the eastern U.S. “When you think of that, how is that fair? Here we are the closest suppliers and we’re subject to a 20 percent tariff and they’re not subject to this tariff,” he said. 

Adam Ripley

Adam Ripley’s… River Phillip, Cumberland County, woodlot decisions are coming soon. “Pulpwood is the lowest value stuff we sell but the mills that buy our high value saw logs are saying they’re really worried, which means I should be worried,” said Ripley. …Between ten and twenty per cent of what the Ripleys cut goes to kraft pulp mill in Pictou County. …But the sawmills paying a premium to buy his logs sell their woodchips, created as a byproduct, to Northern Pulp. Then there’s the 50 hectares the Ripley’s had thinned this year. …The largest contributor to the silviculture fund that pays for this treatment is Northern Pulp. …Those margins may be about to get a lot worse if Northern Pulp shuts, setting off a domino effect of closures amongst sawmills and harvesting contractors in this highly intertwined industry.

Nearly 200 forestry workers in the Outaouais are out of work after a local pulp and paper mill announced it’s shutting down, joining more than 400 laid off since October. Fortress Global Enterprises announced Thursday it has failed to find a buyer for its plant in Thurso, Que. In turn, hardwood flooring company Lauzon Planchers de bois exclusifs has decided to close its sawmill, also in Thurso, and lay off 113 employees. “Our plan is to find a solution for outside sourcing to restore the factory in a couple months,” said David Lauzon, the company’s CEO. …In the meantime, he said the company has only enough timber to continue operating the sawmill until next Thursday, placing it in a “difficult situation.” The company laid off another 165 employees in October after it ceased its own logging operations.

HALIFAX — The Nova Scotia government could make a key decision as early as Friday regarding the fate of a pulp mill and the thousands of forest industry jobs it supports. The province’s environment minister has until Tuesday to decide whether to approve Northern Pulp’s proposal for a new wastewater facility that would pump millions of litres of treated effluent directly into the Northumberland Strait. …While it’s true that more than 2,500 jobs hang in the balance, Wilson said his decision will include other factors. …Wilson has three options before him: reject the pipeline proposal outright, accept it with conditions, or ask for further information. Premier Stephen McNeil said the fate of the mill near Pictou in northern Nova Scotia was the most important issue facing the province this year. But he gave no indication where his Liberal government is leaning.

As the Nova Scotia government prepares to make a decision on the future of Northern Pulp, an expert in Canadian contract law is calling its agreement with the Pictou County pulp mill a conflict of interest, saying it puts taxpayers at risk… Angela Swan, an adjunct professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. …The Nova Scotia government signed an indemnity agreement with the mill’s former owner, Scott Maritimes Limited, back in 1995, which outlines what could happen if the mill closes or plans for a new facility are rejected. …The agreement protects Northern Pulp against loss or damages, and suggests the province would be entirely on the hook for the cost of cleaning up Boat Harbour and building the new treatment facility. …But a spokesperson for Premier Stephen McNeil says the province is not in a conflict of interest, and… it must deal with agreements made by governments that came before.

Iain Rankin

Nova Scotia’s forestry minister says there will be no changes in forestry practices following a plea from three municipal leaders in southwestern Nova Scotia.  The mayors of Lockeport and Shelburne and the warden of the District of Shelburne wrote to Iain Rankin asking for a moratorium on clear cutting provincewide until new forestry regulations are fully implemented. “I’m not prepared to pick specific regions of the province to stop the forestry industry. They continue to abide by the interim guidelines we’ve had in place. And we’re committed to implementing ecological forestry,” Rankin said following a cabinet meeting Thursday. The warden and mayors are particularly concerned about clearcuts planned for roughly 90 hectares of forest located near Deception Lake north of Shelburne. …Rankin said the first draft of new forestry regulations won’t be made public until the New Year. 

June Caul

FORT FRANCES, Ont. — Mayor June Caul seemed to waver between pessimism and optimism as she assessed the chances of getting at least part of the former Resolute mill complex generating jobs and taxes.  “I’m starting to think we’d need a miracle,” Caul told Tbnewswatch on Tuesday, three weeks before the expiry of the town’s agreement with Riversedge Developments. In October, Riversedge committed to allow interested qualified buyers to inspect the mill buildings and property and to receive information about any environmental issues until Dec. 31. Nothing appears imminent in terms of an offer that might lead to restoring the hundreds of jobs the mill used to provide. However, Caul said a potential investor has floated a smaller-scale proposal. “It wouldn’t involve reopening the whole mill…but it’s nice to know there’s a company that’s interested in part of it, and it would involve the use of wood in some way,” she said.

KINGSEY FALLS, QC  — Cascades Inc., a leader in eco-friendly recycling, packaging and hygiene solutions, announced today that it is exercising its option to purchase the interest of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) in Greenpac Holding. CDPQ owns a 20.2% interest in Greenpac, a lightweight containerboard mill, located in Niagara Falls, NY. The expected purchase price is approximately US$93 million. The transaction is expected to close January 3rd, 2020. As of today, Cascades owns a 66.1% interest in Greenpac.

The subtitle, “20 years of research shows marine ecosystem can handle Northern Pulp waste,” on Jim Williams’ opinion piece oversimplified his statements concerning the effluent from Boat Harbour. I found his presentation nuanced… I am a retired professor, editor of the Canadian Journal of Zoology… I have followed studies in this area for the duration of my career. …Currently, after aeration, sedimentation and dilution from freshwater inflows into Boat Harbour, the effluent exits into the Northumberland Strait. Any thermal differences are minimized by time in the lagoon. Effluent from a future treatment plant would not have this thermal equilibration period and would need aeration and sedimentation to occur within the constructed treatment facility. …While a marine ecosystem still exists after receiving Northern Pipe effluent for 50 years, the true question is what would the marine ecosystem be like if no effluent had entered the Northumberland Strait for all these years? [A digital subscription to the Chronicle Herald is required to read this story in full]

Fortress Global Enterprises announces that it has failed to receive any indications of interest pursuant to its previously announced strategic and financing initiative by the required deadline. Failure to meet a material deadline under the Strategic Initiative when required constitutes an event of default. …The continued downward pressure on the market price for dissolving pulp… have contributed to the Company’s inability to generate positive free cash flow and maintain an adequate level of working capital. …After allowing for the Strategic Initiative to be run thoroughly over several months, the process did not result in any acceptable third-party bids. …The Company continues to engage in active discussions with the Lenders in order to secure the long-term financial viability of the Company’s business, however no assurance can be provided that any resolution will be reached.

Northern Development Minister Greg Rickford is hoping to begin consultations in the New Year, so the province can offer resource revenue sharing to municipalities, as well as First Nations. “We hope to be in a position through a more formal consultation within the next year that will have a resource revenue sharing program for all of the municipalities and Indigenous communities currently not under a resource revenue sharing agreement,” said the minister. “Resource revenue should stay home, here. …Infrastructure should prioritize to support some of those local operations, and I hope to have that program up and running in about a year,” he added. The province is expected to distribute $20 million to $30 million a year through resource revenue sharing for mining, forestry, aggregates and possibly other sources.

CORNER BROOK, N.L. — Union leaders and the City of Corner Brook aren’t panicking over upcoming changes at the Corner Brook Pulp and Paper mill. Late last week, the company confirmed the mill is set to shut down its operations for 14 days, starting Christmas Eve. Around 365 workers – about 300 in the mill and another 65 in the forest operations – will be affected by the shutdown. Paul Humber is president of Unifor Local 242, the union that represents papermakers at the mill. He told The Western Star he understood why the company had to make the decisions it did. …Humber feels the mill remains well-positioned in the marketplace and isn’t concerned about its long-term future, despite the company also saying there may be more downtime in the coming months.

Jim Williams

The discussion about the proposed new effluent treatment facility at Northern Pulp (NP) has turned into a fisheries-vs.-forestry debate, an either-or choice. And yet, for the last several decades, these two industries have co-existed quite happily …I’m increasingly disturbed by the misrepresentation and misinformation of the science surrounding the situation… I believe the scientific evidence indicates that we don’t need to sacrifice one industry for the other …I’m a research professor at St. F.X., and have done research in the estuarine and coastal zones of the Strait for the last 22 years… First of all, the present-day treated NP effluent is not toxic. …treated NP effluent has been released into the Strait since the mill was built. …So, in summary, after 25 years of exposure to very high concentrations of treated NP effluent, an exhaustive survey of the benthic community and resident fish populations did not show any clear negative impacts in the receiving environment.  You could not design and carry out a set of experiments that would provide a fraction of the information that is available from simply examining the receiving environment. [A digital subscription may be required to read the full story]

EACOM Timber and the United Steelworkers (USW) union have ratified a six-year agreement for employees at the company’s Timmins sawmill. …“The speed at which we reached this agreement is a testament to the level of collaboration and trust between both parties and our willingness to arrive at a mutually beneficial solution,” said Wade Zammit, EACOM’s chief operating officer in the release. …Jacques Jean, president of the USW Local 1-2010, was equally optimistic about the collaboration. …“Now it’s time to continue building on and improving the already good relation, communication, trust, and collaboration between the parties.” EACOM employs 160 people at its Timmins mill and regional administrative centre, 110 of whom are members of the United Steelworkers.

Keith Goulding

The negative effects of job losses and a two-week shutdown of operations at the town’s paper mill will be felt beyond Corner Brook, says the president of the Greater Corner Brook Board of Trade.  Everyone from business vendors who work with the mill directly to local retailers will likely see the effects of the loss of permanent jobs and a temporary cut in income for the remaining employees, Keith Goulding told Newfoundland Morning. “It has ripple effects through the entire western region, and central Newfoundland and Labrador as well,” Goulding said. Corner Brook Pulp and Paper announced Friday that it would be cutting back its workforce by 22 permanent positions and temporarily shutting down for two weeks over the holidays, beginning Christmas Eve. The affected employees will move into the mill’s casual pool.

Two forest-product companies are on the hook for maintaining a mercury waste site near Ontario’s Grassy Narrows First Nation, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled. The 4-3 decision Friday brought some clarity to a dispute that bubbled up decades after serious environmental contamination took place in the region. Untreated mercury waste from a pulp-and-paper mill’s operations in Dryden, Ont., entered the English-Wabigoon river system in the 1960s. In addition to causing health problems for some residents, the toxic byproduct of chemical production used for bleaching in the paper-making process led to closure of a commercial fishery and hurt tourism. In 1971, the mill owners of the day built the disposal site to contain mercury-laced waste. Six monitoring wells were installed and four others were added later.

Seth Kursman

Resolute Forest Products is ‘disappointed’ by this morning’s split decision from the Supreme Court of Canada. “The case was not about clean-up but rather whether the indemnity covered an order requiring monitoring and the posting of financial assurance for potential future work,” said company spokesman Seth Kursman. Earlier today, judges from the court dismissed an appeal by Resolute and Weyerhaeuser, who argued they weren’t responsible for ongoing costs associated with the monitoring and financial assurances related to the former dump site near the Dryden mill. The province argued, successfully, that an indemnification issued by Queen’s Park in 1985 didn’t relate to a directive from the Ministry of Environment, related to the former dump site. Kursman says the company disagrees.

The response by police, fire and hazmat crews to a report of noxious fumes in a car parked behind a Sobeys store in Dartmouth (Nov. 22 story) was immediate and appropriate. The fumes were identified as toxic hydrogen sulphide, a corrosive and poisonous chemical. People involved were treated in hospital and the source of fumes removed. This incident made me wonder if Nova Scotians realize (or care) that since 1967 to present day, the people of Pictou Landing, native and non-native together, have been living daily in the presence of hydrogen sulphide fumes rising from the effluent at Boat Harbour. …Residents have complained to no avail for decades to the mill and to government about these fumes causing burning eyes, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and feelings of suffocation. [Scroll down the page to read two further letters on this topic]

CORNER BROOK, N.L. — Employees at Corner Brook Pulp and Paper will be getting some unexpected time off during the upcoming holiday period. However, it won’t be a paid vacation as the paper mill is set to shut down its operations for 14 days, starting Christmas Eve. Around 365 workers — about 300 in the mill and another 65 in the forest operations — will be affected by the shutdown. The company will resume newsprint production Jan. 6. Corner Brook Pulp and Paper also announced that 22 of its workers will be reassigned to the casual pool. The company said  the two measures help the mill face difficult market conditions. and ensure its long-term competitiveness. The workforce reorganization is part of the plan to improve labour costs and achieve efficiencies throughout the organization.

Gheryl Gallant

Ottawa, Ontario – Cheryl Gallant, M.P. for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke and Conservative expressed her disappointment following the Liberal Government’s Speech from the Throne. “Northern Ontario has been completely abandoned by the Liberal Government.  With not a single mention of helping those who work in the forestry or mining industries… this Government continues to leave Northern Ontario and its workers behind.” Eric Melillo, newly elected Conservative MP for Kenora, states “The Liberal Government’s promise to ‘preserve Canada’s natural legacy, protecting 25 percent of Canada’s land and 25 percent of Canada’s oceans by 2025,’ will actually make it more difficult for Northern Ontario workers who work in the logging industry to access land to harvest. Properly managed forestry is not only good for the economy, it’s good for the environment as well. …I believe we have to strike a balance to avoid hindering the hardworking men and women of Canada’s forestry industry, particularly in my riding of Kenora.”

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada is expected to bring clarity today to the question of who should pay for cleaning up a mercury-contaminated site near Ontario’s Grassy Narrows First Nation. Eight years ago, the Ontario government ordered Weyerhaeuser Co. and Resolute Forest Products to do remedial work on the former pulp-and-paper mill site in Dryden, Ont., where about 9,000 kilograms of toxic effluent was dumped in the English-Wabigoon River system in the 1960s. The two companies claim that an indemnity granted in 1985 to the company that owned the facility at the time applies to them as well, something the province disputes. An Ontario judge ruled in favour of the companies in 2016, saying the language of the indemnity should cover the two subsequent owners as well, but the decision was largely overturned on appeal.

FPInnovations applauds the Ontario government’s support of the forest sector, and the continued advancement of traditional and innovative wood products, with the release of its draft Forest Sector Strategy. The Strategy promotes job creation, encourages economic growth and reduces unnecessary costs for businesses while ensuring Ontario forests are sustainably managed. Among many proposed benefits, the Strategy highlights opportunities for non-traditional and innovative uses of wood fibre, promotes forest-sector growth and aims at creating new markets for innovative and sustainable products. The research of FPInnovations and its partners delivers solutions that address the challenges of the entire Canadian forest-sector value chain. The research is aligned with the Ontario government’s overall strategy to increase the competitiveness of its forest industry to meet the demanding realities of the 21 century. FPInnovations and its partners are well-positioned to assist in its implementation across Ontario.

After a year spent talking to forestry folks, the Ford government rolled out a draft of its anticipated Forest Sector Strategy, Dec. 4. According to Natural Resources and Forestry Minister John Yakabuski, the proposed strategy is geared toward stimulating job creation, promoting industry growth and access to wider markets, cutting “unnecessary” regulation and costs for businesses, while ensuring Crown forests are sustainably managed. The strategy is a compilation of the feedback gathered … during roundtable discussions held across the province in 2018 and 2019, as well as from surveys and emailed submissions. The government is now consulting with Ontarians by digitally posting it on the Environmental Registry. The commenting period closes Feb. 5. A final strategy is coming out sometime next spring. …Innovation that will diversify the forest products mix has also captured the government’s attention, particularly the emerging mass timber movement and use of lumber for construction of tall wood buildings.

It’s uncanny how some amateurs know so much more about forestry than those in the business. Or at least they think they do. The Nova Scotia forest industry drives over $2 billion in annual economic activity. The closure of the Northern Pulp mill would be devastating, not only for the forest industry but for the province as a whole. There are about 11,500 Nova Scotians deriving their livelihood directly or indirectly from forestry… Many thousands of them could be about to lose their jobs.  …This is not economy vs. environment: we can have both. There is no reason to sacrifice thousands for a vocal few offering simplistic, naïve solutions. We all use paper, wood and forest products every day. The green economy will demand more of these renewables in place of hydrocarbons, plastics, concrete and steel. We should continue to make them here in Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia’s business minister is not interested in discussing the future of Northern Pulp until that future becomes clearer. With less than two weeks before a decision is expected on the Pictou County mill’s application to build a new effluent treatment facility, Business Minister Geoff MacLellan said his department would not be commenting on details about loans the company has with the province until Environment Minister Gordon Wilson delivers that decision. …Previous governments made loans to Northern Pulp in 2009 and 2013 and to Northern Timber Nova Scotia Corp., an affiliate company, in 2010. The outstanding balance on the three loans as of Sept. 26 was $85.5 million. But while the government made that information, along with the interest rates for the three loans, available in response to a recent access-to-information request by the Chronicle Herald, the government will not provide details about what the loans say would happen should the company cease operations.