The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)

Hundreds rally to keep mill open

- FRANCIS CAMPBELL fcampbell@herald.ca @frankscrib­bler

They came by bus, they came by logging truck and they came by car.

Most of the 700 or so people who huddled in freezing temperatur­es along Granville Street in Halifax on Thursday morning came by an honest and sometimes lifelong commitment to Nova Scotia's forest industry.

“We're in a hell of a mess here and we need some leadership,” said Richard Freeman, the man at the helm of Freeman Lumber in Greenfield, Queens County, one of the oldest family-run sawmills in North America.

Addressing the crowd at Province House that rallied to try to convince Premier Stephen McNeil to extend the Boat Harbour Act deadline and keep the Northern Pulp mill running, Freeman spoke of the 11,500 Nova Scotians working in the forestry industry.

“These are people who want to be in Nova Scotia,” Freeman said. “They didn't bugger off to Alberta, damn it. They have the same aspiration­s that everybody has in this province. They want to feed their families, they want to clothe their families, they want a solid roof over their heads, they want to educate their people and they want to protect their communitie­s.

“It's their livelihood at stake.” The severity of the situation was clarified earlier Thursday when Brian Baarda, chief executive officer of Paper Excellence Canada, Northern Pulp Nova Scotia's parent company, said in a statement that the mill will close without an extension to the Boat Harbour Act. McNeil said in a statement Wednesday that he will make his decision public Friday on whether to extend the Act.

Mill and forestry workers who descended on downtown Halifax chanted slogans and carried signs reading Nova Scotia Needs Forestry and Amend The Boat Harbour Act.

“A lot of people don't realize it but every sawmill job supports three more in the broader economy,” Freeman said. “Every one of those jobs will be impacted if Northern Pulp is needlessly driven from this province.”

Freeman said people's lives and livelihood­s shouldn't be determined by the legislated Jan. 31, 2020, deadline date to close the Boat Harbour effluent treatment facility.

“There is no sense in gutting rural Nova Scotia because a date on a piece of paper turned out to be unrealisti­c. Despite great efforts, we see our employees, their children, our friends, our communitie­s facing dire consequenc­es from a date that has been unrealisti­c from the start. Forestry jobs and environmen­tal protection can and will go hand in hand.

“All we need is strong leadership. We look to Stephen McNeil and all our elected representa­tives to provide that leadership, to end the blame game, to stop pointing fingers and to demonstrat­e the patience and determinat­ion required to see both the economy and the environmen­t succeed.”

Linda MacNeil, director of Unifor Atlantic, the union that represents some 240 of the mill's 300 workers, said closing Boat Harbour is the right decision for the province and for the people of the Pictou Landing First Nation, who she said had been lied to throughout the early history of the mill.

“McNeil can live up to his promise to the people of Pictou Landing First Nation of closing

Boat Harbour, we are all 110 per cent in support of that very same thing,” the union leader said.

“But allow the company the time to accomplish the building of the water treatment facility first. Boat Harbour was a mistake, Premier McNeil, do not make another mistake by willingly throwing 2,700 people out of work overnight and casting 11,000 people across this sector into economic turmoil. … We can support good jobs, protect the environmen­t and respect First Nations and that, Mr. Premier, is what we need to do.”

Debbie Reeves, a sixth-generation woodlot owner from New Ross and the elected first vicepresid­ent of Forest Nova Scotia, said the industry is the lifeblood of rural communitie­s, keeping seniors in their homes and providing funding for schools, fire department­s and community centres.

“Without this, the lifeblood of our rural communitie­s will be sucked out,” Reeves said. “We are now on life support in rural Nova Scotia. If we do not get an extension for Northern Pulp tomorrow, we are done. Premier McNeil will have pulled the plug on rural Nova Scotia.”

Don MacKenzie, president of the Unifor local at the mill, echoed some of the speakers in saying the mill has designed an effluent treatment system that uses the latest technology to thwart environmen­tal harm.

“This isn't just an issue of the 300 people in the mill, this is an issue for thousands of people throughout the province and if they (government) get it wrong, it's going to have very detrimenta­l effects,” MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie was with the Communicat­ions, Energy and Paperworke­rs Union of Canada when the Bowater mill in Brooklyn, near Liverpool, closed in 2012 and he was on the negotiatin­g team when the NewPage mill in Point Tupper filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011.

“You can't find anything positive about a closure,” MacKenzie said. “Your house values drop, your young people move away, businesses close. It has that ripple effect. There is nothing coming in behind this (mill).”

 ?? RYAN TAPLIN • THE CHRONICLE HERALD ?? Hundreds of forestry workers and supporters rally outside of Province House on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019. Northern Pulp says it will shut down its Pictou County mill if the government doesn't extend the Boat Harbour Act deadline.
RYAN TAPLIN • THE CHRONICLE HERALD Hundreds of forestry workers and supporters rally outside of Province House on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019. Northern Pulp says it will shut down its Pictou County mill if the government doesn't extend the Boat Harbour Act deadline.

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