Mayor, MLAs respond to Northwood Pulp closure

Prince George Mayor Simon Yu wants to see higher levels of government provide assistance if the financial impact is severe

Prince George’s mayor would like to see the provincial and federal governments provide financial assistance to the city if the financial impact of Northwood Pulp Mill turns out to be severe. On Tuesday, July 14, Canfor announced that the pulp mill will be permanently closed by the end of 2026 after previously curtailing some activities at the facility. The closure will impact around 300 employees and with an assessed value of almost $110 million, there could be a big hit to the City of Prince George’s property taxes.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, July 15, Mayor Simon Yu said it hurt to hear the news, having carried out engineering work at the mill prior to entering politics and having connections to people who work there. With the decision to outright close the facility rather than implement further curtailments, Yu said it will be important for the city to continue diversifying local industry and business so that it can continue growing. “We are going to have a lot of mining activity around us,” he said.

“We are the base camp for mining operations throughout north-central BC, so we hope that the 300 families affected will find new employment soon. Having said that, forestry was and always will be part of Prince George.” He said the modern expansion of the city in the ‘60s through ‘80s was due to prior city fathers making sure that the three mills were built inside city limits and contribute to tax revenues.

This year, Prince George city council has helped lead a call from various municipalities to have the province end the closure allowance. In 2016, provincial legislation was introduced that allows the owners of shuttered industrial and electrical generating facilities to apply to BC Assessment to have their property taxes reduced to one-tenth of their previous value. This already happened at the Prince George Pulp and Paper mill that Canfor closed a few years ago.

Yu said that if such an allowance is granted to the property that Northwood sits on, it could have a “drastic” impact on Prince George’s tax revenues, which could in turn raise the tax burden onto other properties or require a reduction in services. “I do believe the federal government and provincial government need to step in to give us some temporary support if the impact is more immediate in the coming year,” he said. The mayor expressed a hope that either Canfor might repurpose the facility or find another company to do the same thing.

After the announcement, Yu said he spoke with provincial Forest Minister Ravi Parmar about how the closure isn’t regarding fibre supply, but Canfor losing money due to global competition in the pulp sector. At the beginning of July, the day before Alberta announced its intention to pursue a new bitumen pipeline to BC’s Lower Mainland rather than the North Coast, Premier David Eby and Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the “Canada-British Columbia co-operative prosperity agreement.” The document talks about BC’s importance to Canadian trade and support for several industries.

Included in it was an acknowledgement that the softwood lumber industry has been hit by trade and supply chain disruptions, including those caused by ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada. “Canada and British Columbia commit to concrete and practical measures to stabilize, transform and strengthen the sector,” the agreement said. “That work will include measures to modernize operations, support simplified and efficient access to fibre, attract investment, expand the use of wood in construction, grow value-added production, and diversify export markets, while ensuring environmental sustainability and responsible forest stewardship.”

As part of this, Yu said he wanted to see the federal government develop a national forestry strategy to ensure the sector’s survival and find new value-added opportunities for Canadian wood. He said he was recently told by the federal government that Prince George will likely be given a research grant to help it explore the creation of a local modular home production centre. Going forward, Yu said the city needs to work diligently to foster local investment and create jobs across all sectors.

He said that needs to include partnership with First Nations. He said he’d like to see Prince George and Lheidli T’enneh First Nation create a community forest like other regional communities like McBride and Mackenzie.

The Citizen reached out to Parmar for an interview but was told his schedule was full. However, the minister issued a statement on July 14 about 90 minutes after the closure was announced, calling the news “heartbreaking for the workers, their families, contractors and the entire Prince George community and region.” He said he had reached out to the union local representing workers at the mill, the city and other community partners to offer support while representatives from several ministries would be working to help those losing their jobs.

"We will be leaning on our federal government partners, through the recently signed Canada-British Columbia Cooperative Prosperity Agreement, to help support the transition the forestry sector is facing in the Prince George region,” Parmar said. "As noted by Canfor, the closure of this facility is the result of a structural shift in global pulp markets and challenges in fibre supply. "There is no question that BC’s forestry sector is facing immense challenges from U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and duties, weak lumber prices affecting sawmill operations, and a steep and continued decline in pulp prices.

None of that softens today's news, but it shows why we must keep pushing to stabilize and transform BC’s forestry sector.” In its own release published the morning of July 15, the Conservative Party of BC tied the closure to government policies it said has made it harder to keep mills open. “Excessive environmental regulations, shifting definitions of old growth, third-party agreements cutting into profitability, punitive stumpage fees, endless permitting delays and uncertainty around land claims have driven up costs and pushed investment out of BC,” the release said.

“Forest companies are now facing costs and obligations so high that some operations are simply no longer viable.” Reached by phone on July 15, Conservative MLAs Sheldon Clare of Prince George-North Cariboo and Kiel Giddens of Prince George-Mackenzie said they had spoken with representatives of both the union representing mill workers and Canfor since the announcement. Giddens said the impact of the closure will be felt beyond the 300 people losing their jobs at the mill to those working in the woods, the trucking sector and support businesses that serve the facility.

“As much as we talk about our challenges with our neighbours to the south, this is not a tariff issue,” Giddens said. “This is really a crisis of economic confidence. A lot of the customers in this case are actually in Asia, not in the US.

It’s the overall policy landscape and constraints on the land base that are making it so much harder to do business in forestry and natural resources in this province.” He said that BC is still levying an industrial carbon tax after abolishing the consumer version, making it harder for the sector to compete with those in other countries and continents. Clare said the province needs to get back to basics in forestry, like making sure companies are able to achieve the maximum allowable amount of cut wood in a given year.

On the recent federal-provincial agreement, Clare said both governments have implemented policies that haven’t been helpful to BC. “We have an imbalance with transfer payments that have been a long festering concern,” he said. “It does not reflect our population and the changes in the province.

I think they need to sort out exactly what their economic vision is for Western Canada and to move forward with it.” Both MLAs said they were working on getting more information on the situation so they can assist affected workers, mitigate any issues and hold the government to account for its role in the closure.