Northern Pulp pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge under the federal Fisheries Act stemming from a 2014 effluent spill. Lawyers for the federal Environment Department and the mill arrived at Pictou provincial court with an agreed statement of facts and prepared to enter the plea and seek a sentence from Judge Del Atwood. However, Atwood…

In April this year, the Tla’amin First Nation will officially become a self-governing nation under a new treaty that will roughly quadruple its land base, grant new forest tenures and shellfish leases and provide $29 million in cash and $11 million in economic development funds.  All of which means new economic development opportunities for the…

Nova Scotia Power is defending the suite of rates and tariffs it wants to impose on renewable energy producers who use its grid to get into the retail electricity business. “The tariffs are fair and transparent,” Nova Scotia Power vice president Mark Sidebottom told a Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board hearing. Regulators began hearings…

A Canada-China free-trade deal could bring “billions and billions of dollars” to the sagging Canadian economy each year, according to an expert on the subject matter. Laura Dawson, director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, recently co-authored a study on a Canada-China free-trade agreement. The study will be released next week….

During the recent climate talks in Paris, Premier Christy Clark struck a pose as one of the belles of the ball – showcasing B.C. as a climate-change leader that had proven greenhouse gases can be reduced by taxing them without ruining the economy. But B.C.’s industrial and extractive sectors are warning that raising the province’s…

Port Hawkesbury Paper has filed a North American Free Trade Agreement appeal in light of the U.S. government’s decision to uphold tariffs on the mill’s exports. The U.S. International Trade Commission released the decision papers on Wednesday, upholding a ruling that the U.S. paper industry was “materially injured” by imports of supercalendered paper from three mills in Canada owned by Port Hawkesbury Paper,…

Port Hawkesbury Paper LP is vowing to use the North American Free Trade Agreement to fight a penalizing tariff imposed on its paper exports to the United States. Management at the Nova Scotia mill was disappointed when the U.S. International Trade Commission announced Wednesday it would uphold a 20.18 per cent tariff placed on supercalendered…

As the dust settles from Monday’s federal election, to paraphrase former prime minister Kim Campbell, it’s time to talk about serious issues again. The Conservatives were hoping to make 2015 a free trade election, by signing onto the world’s largest trade deal at the end of July. But things didn’t go as planned at the…

B.C.-based Catalyst Paper has been hit with punishing duties on its U.S. exports of a specialty paper because American companies say Canadian producers are subsidized and dumping the product at below-market prices south of the border. However, Catalyst argues the tariff has been unfairly slapped on its exports without having been given due process in…

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement doesn’t resolve Canada’s long-running dispute with the United States over softwood lumber, or remove restrictions on log exports from B.C. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday the Canadian government would like to renew the Canada-U.S. softwood agreement, expired as of Thanksgiving Day. It’s a side deal outside the North American Free…