Workers face uncertain future as Prince George, B.C., mill winds down
Canfor said Tuesday that the Northwood pulp mill closure was the result of "unsustainable financial losses," and the shutdown will be finalized toward the end of 2026.
'They just called everyone out to the front and announced the closure,' union president says
After nine years working at the Northwood pulp mill in Prince George, B.C., Ryan Zanette is brushing up his resume.
The interim president for Unifor Local 603 learned Tuesday that Canfor was shuttering plant, leaving 300 workers out of a job.
“They just called everyone out to the front and announced the closure, and that’s all we've heard," Zanette said.
“Everyone is really upset," he added. "It's going to hit really hard."
Zanette said he's waiting for a meeting with the company in two weeks to find out what's next.
Canfor said Tuesday that the closure was the result of "unsustainable financial losses," and that the shutdown will be finalized toward the end of 2026.
Prince George Mayor Simon Yu called the news "devastating."
“[Pulp mills] are some of the major reason we as a community survived during the '60s, '70s, '80s, they were the backbone of the local economy," he said.
"It's like a dear family member that is going down."
Yu said the city has worked to diversify its economy and will survive, but that the shutdown will have lasting impacts.
Prince George Chamber of Commerce executive director Neil Godbout said the mill's closure will hurt the city's bottom line.
"Residents and businesses that pay taxes, you are going to feel this, this is going to have an impact on the City of Prince George's tax revenues," he told CBC News.
“Where are they going to find these millions of dollars that Canfor was paying?"
Local businesses who rely on those workers' dollars will feel the pinch, as will suppliers and truckers who fed the mill.
Council of Forest Industries president and CEO Kim Haakstad said the closure also poses a real threat saw mills that are still operating.
"One of their most important customers is pulp mills," she said.
"As we lose pulp mills, sawmills lose a key revenue stream and that causes potential challenges for the other forest companies in a community or in a region."
Industry 'in crisis'
The Northwood announcement follows a string of mill closures and curtailments in recent years that have cost thousands of lost jobs.
Haakstad said the pulp sector and wider forestry industry are "in crisis," amid what she said were skyrocketing costs and long permit times.
“The changes that we need to make the sector resilient again, restore competitiveness, are not happening quickly enough to save jobs and facilities across the province," she said.
David Elstone, a strategic adviser in the forestry sector who writes the newsletter View from the Stump, said the industry faces both supply and demand problems.
On one side, the sector faces U.S. duties and tariffs coupled with weak pulp prices in China. On the other, the mountain pine beetle and other challenges have limited access to fibre.
"We still have trees to harvest," he told CBC's B.C. Today. "We just can't harvest well."
Kiel Giddens, the B.C. Conservative MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie, blamed red tape for preventing companies from accessing economically viable timber.
“There is a real structural challenge for permitting for getting cutting permits, but also the old-growth deferrals, the constraints on the land base are just overall adding to the challenges," he said.
Forests Minister Ravi Parmar said the province would be stepping in with supports for affected workers.
But he said the province was still grappling with how make the industry more competitive and less susceptible to commodity pricing.
Parmar said he hoped to soon lay out a scheme to move the industry from a "cutting permit by cutting permit" model to a "regime of operational plans."
"That will in return lead to them of having certainty anywhere between 10 to 20-plus years to know exactly where they are going to build their roads and exactly what trees they are going to cut down," Parmar said.
With files from Simon Little, Hanna Petersen and Wildinette Paul
