The forestry industry is one of the biggest industries in Nova Scotia with over 11,000 employees and without it, the province will not be able to survive. Northern Pulp was the biggest pulp mill in Atlantic Canada and basically, all the mills in Nova Scotia sent all of their chips up there. I don’t think that N.S. Premier Stephen McNeil gave the pulp mill a shot from the beginning and his plan the whole time was to shut it down.
This doesn’t just affect one mill in Nova Scotia, it affects everything within the industry. The 300 plus employees who are now without jobs and lumber mills such as Harry Freemans will not be lugging chips up to Northern Pulp and will lose what makes the company the most money. Next, truck drivers who haul pulp wood to the mills to cut, or haul the chips to Northern Pulp will be laid off as well when, without any chips going anywhere, they don’t need as many trucks.
Premier McNeil proved that he doesn’t care about the forestry industry when he rejected the extension of Northern Pulp back on Dec. 20, with him saying that the mill had five years to meet Nova Scotia’s environmental code and wasn’t any farther than when they introduce the five-year plan. At the beginning of the five years, the Department of Environment required seven studies, at the end of the five years they were at 68 studies.
To me and the 11,000 families that have been affected by this; it was a set up from the beginning to shut Northern Pulp down.
Justin Arenburg,
UPEI student
