Juno News - October 02, 2019Why aren’t forestry jobs as important to Liberals as SNC-Lavalin jobs？
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Summary
A long-standing and robust pulp mill near Pictou, Nova Scotia, employs thousands of people, and one whose future is uncertain because of a back and forth between the government, the mill, the workers, and a nearby First Nations community.
Transcript
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I'm standing outside the perimeter of the northern pulp mill, a long-standing
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and very robust pulp mill near Pictou, Nova Scotia. It's a mill that employs thousands of people
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and one whose future is uncertain because of a back and forth between the government,
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the mill, the workers and a nearby First Nations community. At heart is a plan for the mill to
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export its effluent to the Northumberland Strait to build a pipeline that would do it.
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Now this isn't just about dumping waste into the water. The company is also prepared to build a new
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water treatment plant that would actually make it so that the product that is being put there
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is clean in nature and not environmentally harmful. And what's happening is the company is not expecting
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special treatment except for to say we want you to investigate and do an environmental assessment of
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this so that we can protect jobs and make our plans and start working on this thing as soon as possible.
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But what's happening is the Premier of Nova Scotia is dickering around and saying that
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the company needs to do more, that they need to offer more information, and that its process has
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not been sufficiently science-based. The federal government has had ample opportunity to intervene
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but has not done so. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has said we need to understand the impact
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on climate change that this will have. But what's interesting is that the Liberals have
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already decided to throw away the rule of law when it came to S&C Lavalin because
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of this idea that jobs might be at stake. Yet jobs are also at stake here and for whatever reason that
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hasn't even motivated the government not to intervene to break the rule of law but just to speed up the
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bureaucratic process on this. Now the reason I'm in town is because I'm interviewing George Canyon who is
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a conservative candidate in Central Nova and one of the people aiming to represent the thousands of workers
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many of whose jobs are on the line because of this. And this is a rare situation where it shouldn't be
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about partisanship. The Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDPs, all of them should want to look out for
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the worker. But the problem is that pulp is an industry that is being targeted by the government.
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Forestry is one of the sectors most disproportionately impacted by the federal carbon tax and more
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importantly when the government starts talking about the impact on climate change it's really
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saying that we think this is yesterday's industry but for the workers it is the industry of today.
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It is a generational impact. I've talked to people in town and one of the things that this mill has
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going for it is that people who work there oftentimes are the children and grandchildren of people who have
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been working here. And it's not just that we should keep it open for nostalgia's sake or that we should
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throw out the science. No, quite to the contrary, the science is saying there's a way to do this safely,
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cleanly, and efficiently. But for whatever reason the government is making that difficult.
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Now the reason this is an important topic is because in an election time
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people are going to politicians to say what are you going to do for me? For the workers of this mill
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that's a very simple question. What are you going to do for me? Well how about keep the mill open?
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Keep people working. Whenever a government talks about jobs, whenever a government talks about employment,
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it's always important to look at not what they're going to do to create new jobs,
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but what are they going to do to not block existing jobs from being rendered extinct.
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And that's an all-too-real reality for the people of the northern pulp mill in Pictou, Nova Scotia.
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I'm here covering the stories the mainstream media isn't and from a perspective the mainstream media isn't.
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It's not cheap though, but it is important. If you can chip into our election coverage efforts,
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please do head on over to tnc.news and make a contribution in whatever amount you're able to.
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From Nova Scotia for True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.