Another hit to Northern Ontario’s forestry industry...
By Peter James | Kenora Daily Miner and News | Wednesday November 23, 2005
Northern Ontario’s forest industry took another big hit Tuesday as Cascades announced it is shutting down its Thunder Bay fine paper mill.
“This is starting to get scary,” Kenora Mayor Dave Canfield said, when reached at the Association of Manitoba Municipalities Conference in Brandon.
The shutdown is the latest in a long line of cutbacks and mill closures that have hit workers and communities across the region in recent months.
Cascades hinted earlier this fall the Thunder Bay mill was on shaky ground. Originally they had planned to shut down one paper machine and cut 150 jobs. Now they’ve decided to close the doors completely, putting an additional 375 people out of work.
“The sad truth is this isn’t going to end anytime soon,” Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union Ontario vice-president Cecil Makowski said of the closures of mills across the north.
Makowski said Cascades decision to shut the mill comes at a strange time considering the federal government is set to announce an aid package for the sector. But speaking on CBC Radio Cascades spokesman Hubert Bolduc said he expects the federal package will be targeted more towards the sawmill sector.
Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton put the blame for the closure on the provincial government’s energy policies. He said other challenges the industry is facing, like falling prices and a rising Canadian dollar are the same across Canada, yet Ontario firms also have to deal with higher costs for electricity. “As long as that disparity continues more Northern Ontario paper mills will be pushed over the edge,” he said.
The closure of the mill should signal that the provincial government needs to do more to help the industry or the whole region will suffer, Canfield said. Thunder Bay’s economy will suffer the biggest blow as they will lose not only the mill but also any associated jobs.
“They are the service centre for the industry,” he said.
Makowski said the mill jobs are even more important because they’re difficult to replace. “When it closes you lose primary employees. You can’t absorb those jobs anymore,” he said.
Bowater’s Thunder Bay mill, already on shaky ground, could also be affected by the Cascades closure. Makowski said Cascades buys market pulp from Bowater. “It’s tightening the noose around that mill,” he said.
There is plenty of uncertainty about the future of other Thunder Bay mills. Abitibi-Consolidated still has its Fort William mill and the associated timberlands on the selling block. “We are expecting that the sale process will be completed by the end of the year,” company spokesman Denis Leclerc said.
In Kenora the Devlin Timber mill closed in February and the Abitibi-Consolidated mill hasn’t been making paper for a month and the long-term future is still up in the air. (*)
