A load retention tariff at the local paper mill continues to do what it was intended. On January 23, the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (UARB) issued a decision regarding the Nova Scotia Power Inc. and Port Hawkesbury Paper (PHP) load retention tariff. Dave Rodenheiser, spokesperson with NSPI, said the decision found the current…
The Moose Cree First Nation is looking seriously at getting into manufacturing as its next big development project. The First Nation’s economic development department is about to begin work on a feasibility study for either constructing or purchasing an existing facility to make wood pellets. Wood pellets are typically used by wood-burning furnaces – which…
Tree Canada will start planting new trees this spring in Fort McMurray, nearly a year after wildfire ravaged the area. The project is dubbed Operation ReLeaf – Fort McMurray, and it has the potential to continue into 2018. More than $1.3 million has been collected by Tree Canada from individuals, as well as corporate sponsors, and donations…
A renegotiation of Nafta could be used to settle a lumber dispute that’s been simmering between Canada and the U.S. for decades and threatens to make housing unaffordable for thousands of Americans, according to the world’s largest newsprint maker. The Canadian government will probably want lumber included in a new North American Free Trade Agreement,…
B.C. Forest Minister Steve Thomson flew to Ottawa on Sunday to start working toward a new trade agreement on softwood lumber with the U.S. as officials south of the border prepare for trade litigation that could result in punitive duties on one of B.C. major industries. Thomson said he will be working with Chrystia Freeland, federal minister of foreign…
The year 2016 proved to be a tumultuous time in the forest industry in Merritt. The Tolko Industries mill was shut down in December, a decision which left more than 200 people scrambling to find employment in a matter of months. The mill’s closure — coupled with a major fire at the Diacarbon wood pellet plant…
The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA), one of the most ignominious deals in Canadian business history, is being quietly euthanized. Last week, its Ottawa-based secretariat was closed, without fanfare or eulogy. However, most of the agreement’s signatories seem as reluctant to admit its demise as they have been to acknowledge its true nature. According to…
A decade after billions of mountain pine beetles chewed their way through British Columbia’s lodgepole pine forest, the Interior timber supply has begun a dramatic drop. “These cut reductions are starting to happen, and they are going to be real,” Albert Nussbaum, director of forest analysis and inventory for the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands…
Biofuels could be the right solution at the right time for Northern Ontario. That’s the message that a delegation of companies from Finland brought to various area businesses, government agencies, and municipalities including at least one First Nation during a visit to Thunder Bay. “We’re promoting the European know-how,” said Matti Virkkunen, a research scientist…
To slow the spread of emerald ash borer into new parts of Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is expanding areas regulated to control emerald ash borer to include the city of Thunder Bay in Ontario, as well as the Municipalités Régionales de Comtés of Joliette and D’Autray in Quebec. It is prohibited to…