KaCHING!
Scroll down for update.
Over a backdrop of taxpayer-funded happy, shiny people government advertising, we find out today Calvert’s opening bid for 3 NDP seats in Prince Albert;
Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert is set to make an announcement about forestry in Prince Albert Wednesday and there’s speculation it could be about reopening part of the city’s closed pulp and paper operation.
More than 300 former millworkers packed into the city’s union centre for a closed door meeting Tuesday night.
Before the mills closed, Weyerhaeuser was Prince Albert’s largest private sector employer. Before the mills closed, Weyerhaeuser was Prince Albert’s largest private sector employer.
While they were saying little afterward, it’s believed they were mulling over a plan by forestry company Domtar and the province to reopen at least part of the mill.
Do I hear 10% government ownership share and a $22 million donation? Going.. going…
A reader writes privately about something that struck me as well. There is no actual announcement of a plant reopening…
and then there’s that sense of deja vu…
If this sounds kind of familiar, maybe everyone should remember the
Broe ethanol announcement before the last election. Big sod-turning ceremony near Belle Plaine with Calvert, busloads of children, etc. And then it never happened.
Update: local media was invited to a signing ceremony between Calvert and Domtar for “a memorandum of understanding”… after an announcement that listed a number of “subject to'”s (including building a “world class” facility, whatever that means, and the value of the Canadian dollar remaining at par, and approval by regulatory bodies, etc. etc.), the parties left without holding any formal question and answer with reporters. I’m sure someone will have a total of the crapload of cash they’re (promising) to throw at this, including $32 million in grant money…. plus “equity investments” in the Big River and Wakaweekna (sp?) plants and 10% in Domtar’s pulp mill.
Montreal Lake Cree claim they haven’t been consulted, and until they are, nobody’s getting on their land. Translation: “open that wallet, boys”.
A list of the “subject to’s” ;
wood sorting and chipping plant.
Once that’s achieved, Domtar is committed to “make reasonable efforts to
re-open” the pulp mill.
Steve, what you are outlining is a return OF investment not a return ON investment. There are so many things wrong with this deal I simply do not know where to begin. The logic of plowing $100 million into a venture that was shut down because it was not economically viable just escapes me. If these people were ponying up their own money, well, the resultant gain or loss would be contained to their money. In this case they are using public money to attempt to secure a limited number votes to buy an election. This is tantamount to theft.
I have always said that every single government minister and senior bureaucrat should be legally mandated to put their homes up as collatoral on ventures like this.
If that were the case, these schemes would never see the light of day.
ROI = return on investment, no ROI = no profit.
heh, well that is an idea. Anyway, like I said, I tend not to like this sort of thing. I’m probably leftist relative to most people who post here and it is, at the very least, against the principles of the NDP to give corporate handouts. So in that respect its defintely hypocritical. I guess they may argue that they retain a stake in the company which makes it different, but its still bad investment strategy to sink money into something that probably isn’t sustainable. My argument was simply that if it goes ahead, it will probably come out neutral, even if the whole thing sinks shortly after. But then you could argue that the economic fallout from this thing crashing eventually negates the short term benefits. So maybe that’s a whole other debate. How long is long enough?
To the people that are demanding blood over this, I laugh. I mean, cripes. This is politics folks. You act as if this could never happen if beloved Brad Wall ran the show. It doesn’t matter who is in office. This kind of shit is executed by any ruling party prior to an election. It’s the nature of the system. I don’t think Lorne Calvert, Stephane Dione, Brad Wall, Stephen Harper, or even George Bush are bad people. They’re just playing the game the way they are because of the systemic demands.
It makes it easier for us all to digest if we can frame it as bad guys vs good guys. In reality its just different guys with different ideas. Most people are fundamentally well intentioned. This site digs up dirt all the time that satisfies one world view. And I’ll admit it, a lot of it is damning. It’s a good contribution to the overall discourse. But somewhere else, some other politcal savvy person in some other place is posting critical stories about the people and beliefs that Kate Millican and most of the readers of this site constantly praise. On both sides there is some truth to it all.
Some would say that makes me a moderate. I say it makes me an analyst..and one that is not so bloody partisan. We need to stop beating our chests and seeing the world as so black and white. That goes for all sides. I’m not saying there aren’t any objective truths out there, but these places, be they left, right, authoritarian, libertarian or whatever need to stop framing the debate as our side against their side. There are some damn smart and insightful people in all realms of the politcal spectrum.
I’m pretty certain that if Brad Wall and the Sask party were running the show, and they did somethign along similar lines as this (and they would and will), this place would be singing a different tune..or just not talking about it. Now maybe Brad would use some kind of other incentive to attract Dormtar, but it would still be election politics.
The point is… people need to chill out.
While Kate is an intelligent well written woman, she needs to admit that the sky isn’t falling. A change of government is probably a good thing for Saskatchewan, but if this place were anything to go by you would think she lived in a third world country, that lies on the brink of collapse. Last I checked she was able to sustain herself via various freelance jobs (correct me if I’m wrong) and still find time to run this place, which is probably almost a full time job in itself. These aren’t the abysmyl conditions that I would suspect in Saskatchewan if I didn’t know better.
Anyway, not to harp on Kate or anyone else around here, but there are merits in opening our minds a bit and recognizing there are merits in not being a partisan ideolouge.
bio disiel and ethanol make sense for a country trying to limit it’s exposure to foreign energy sources for its needs. It does not really reduce the amount of CO2 produced for energy used.
People are getting confused on renewable enrgy source and something that contributes to global warming.
CO2 is actually a trivial greenhouse gas compared to, well anything else.
“No money for nurses but hundreds of millions for votes. Have they no shame?”
The nurses, and teachers for that matter, already get ENOUGH money!!
Horny Toad
I agree Kate. If my buisness didn’t make money, then I wouldn’t have my house.
Great post, Steve. Thanks for trying to help people find a little bit of balance.
BTW, I’m the only one here who’s going to give you any credit. The rest of them are going to trash you for being an NDP apologist.
steve you sound like a salesman, a poor salesman. but a salesman nonetheless…
not trying to sell anything kelly. That was essentially the point. My argument was basically that politics are muddy and all sides play dirty at times. Don’t buy into any of it, because it happens in all parties and ideologies. We need to try and think more analytically and critically, with less partisanship.
We also need to laugh at ourselves more and not take it all so seriously.
Yeah, at the end of the day the decisions our leaders make have real life implications, but those decisions don’t always deliver good or bad results exclusively. There are costs and benefits in most choices. And sometimes it’s a lot more complicated than the pundits make it out to be. If Trudeau really destroyed “a once proud nation” as the owner of this place once said, then she’s really not taking stake of all that she’s been blessed with. Similarily there are leftists who argue that Reagan fucked up the world for decades to come. Both were instrumental in political movements that have shaped us, but in the end the large majority of us still have it pretty good. Their various political dispositions impact fragments in terms of who becomes a winner or loser. I’m not by any means trying to suggest that politics doesn’t matter. If that were true, then I’m in the wrong business, but I am saying that we’re not going to have facism or communism in Canada anytime soon.
People sit around here all day, myself included at times, and argue their positions as if the proposals of the other side will never net any positives. People are so concerned with saving face (on a f*cking blog of all places) that most are unwilling to concede a point from time to time. Everyone becomes an asshole because they don’t have to discuss the issue to each other in person. I’ve often thought it would be a funny skit to film everyday interactions between people but have them act like they do on blogs to other people. Man..it would be like New York rudeness 10 fold.
I guess I just think its funny how people on here decry the antithesis of their political beliefs to the point that you would think hell is reining upon earth. It gets a little dramatic at times.
Steve,
While you’re well written, you’re wrong on so many levels. You took multiple paragraphs to say “they’re all the same”. This makes you one of two thing: 1)benign and oblivious, in which case I can’t help you, or; 2)an NDP supporter, in which case, you’ll be moving onto “the devil we know” mantra next.
People are rightfully upset about throwing $100 million at a failed venture prior to an election. You better believe it would be a heated discussion if Wall was doing this.
They are all the same in the extent that they will exploit the system in an effort to maintain power. If they don’t they can expect to be trumped by their opponents. The system is such that you fight dirty or lose power. I’m not saying they wouldn’t anyway since most political party members are partisan hacks who see their respective organzations as the only viable avenues for success. Remember when the PC’s and alliance were separated? They bickered at each other all the time, but now they are somehow able to coexist ina blissful union.
Another example would be the fear tactics the NDP is currently using. It’s something incumbents do these days. I don’t like it, but it happens. If these fear tactics work, they will be utilized. We can argue the morality of it all day, but you see it from all parts of the spectrum, whether its Bush in ’04 or Calvert in ’08. Brad wall will use it in 2011.
So, yes, I’m suggesting that by nature of the system, politicians will use the same low ball tricks upon one another in order to keep their opponents from power. And I don’t think any one party encapsulates more corrupt/potentially corrupt people than any other. Most people in politics are hardworking good people. I do think that the longer one is in office, the more time they have to screw up, however. We’ve seen it everywhere. Glen Clark’s NDP in BC, The former Liberal government, Sask’s former tories, plus various Mulroney government scandals. Corruption is an institutional problem and it only takes a few to create that branding for a party. That said, we’re pretty lucky as a country. Many others, even the US, are much more suseptible to it. So in one way, these blogs are good, because dissent and holding our leaders accountable is a good thing, but it would be nice if it were applied across the board.
I do accept that the various parties have different basic ideologies, but that this matters less than the moderating factor of parliament and the Canadian electorate. Stephen Harper when he was with the National Citizen’s coalition was one right wing motherf*cker, but now look at the guy. I’m not saying he’s gone far left or anything, but he’s hangin a lot close to the center. If you’re a big conservative then you were probably dissapointed by his first budget. Even if he had a majority he wouldn’t be able to exhibit himself in anywhere near the same manner that he did in his days prior to sitting in the house.
So what you end up with is leaders who have to cater to the will of the electorate because they lack the ability to sway them in the direction of their personal ideals.
The remedy and exception to this, of course, is charisma and its really lacking in most of our leaders these days. Trudeau and Reagan, for instance, were able to make great inroads towards their ideals because they got people excited. Today voters are apathetic. Stephen Harper leads a government where 65% of the 60% who did vote, didn’t vote for him. He squeezed in out of a rejection for Liberal corruption, not because people thought he had any grand ideas. The only thing that makes him look remotely good is when he’s juxtaposed next to Dion, who couldn’t be any less charasmatic.
Anyway, even with great leaders, politics of the last years have shown that change is not overly radical in western politics. We may move slowly in some directions, but it oscillates in between all of that. The Democrats will probbaly take back the whitehouse in 2008, in a reactionary move, Canada will dethrone Harper and the conservatives, and we’ll head back left for a bit.
A lot of this is overly general, speculative, and could be highly affected by all sorts of variables, but I’m just trying to illustrate that the paradigm shifts most on these blogs want or do not want, will not happen in the blink of an eye.
Actually to be honest I’m so tired and hopped up cold medication that I’m not all that awake while writing this, but hopefully I’ve said something that makes sense. If not, I welcome any critique you may have! 🙂
Goodnight.
The Saskatchewan Democratic Action Party send an email to Domtar asking for clarification whether they have interfered in Saskatchewan’s political environment during a possible election campaign cycle.
If this is true, Domtar has earned our full and unrestrained disugust as a political party in Saskatchewan.
This can only be seen as buying votes, an act expressly forbidden by the Election Act and if elected we will interpret it that way including seeking criminal charges against both the company and politicians involved.
Kate Said:
“I have always said that every single government minister and senior bureaucrat should be legally mandated to put their homes up as collatoral on ventures like this.
If that were the case, these schemes would never see the light of day.
Posted by: Kate | September 13, 2007 12:01 AM”
… if you’ll vote for the Saskatchewan Democratic Action Party – SDAP, we will do much more than that to ensure accountability.
Wowee. Could, might, maybe, I’ll buy that. Facts are, you are looking at about $1.00 for every resident of Saskatchewan, without ongoing operations cost, new or expanded agencies (bound to be setup or coming), and reactivating a non economic plant for pure political gain.
For the sake of the CEP, it’s members, and lets not forget three NDP seats. An interesting calculation would be: take actual number of taxpayers in the province, deduct those whose wages are derived from government services and crown agencies, and take that net number divided into the 100 million, to find out a per capita cost. Then the average joe taxpayer will get a real idea of the initial cost to them, wild card being the opex and other costs, which given the present administration’s stellar record of management, should make people very nervous.
Pulp industry is a dog. If it isn’t economic on BC coast where raw product is in abundance, they have the ability to generate their own power and do (unlike the SPC controlled Sask market), and lowest cost transport in the world, water, who in thier right mind would operate or reactivate a plant in the middle of the country of Canada.
There is an odor here, and an open ended P.O./liability, for which the taxpayer is and will be responsible. Perhaps things will change, but hey, fear and greed have worked for 50 years, why change now?? These guys (NDP) know, it’s not about equity, fairness, or good of the province, it is about getting elected.
SDAP: You ought to just drop the rhetoric, shut up, and move along. You have no transparency, no platform, no information, no members, and no credibility. I thought the roasting you took over at john Murney’s blog would have been enough for you, but masochistically, you keep coming back for me. Believe me, the posters here are not your supporters, and they will be happy to rip you a new one.
Steve: Please note that what I posted about you being trashed as an NDP apologist has come to pass. You’re wasting your time here, but I still think you’re great.
Steve,
You’ve basically outlined what is wrong with the political process and the ideology of democratic socialism.
It’s that investment decsions by government are always political decsions. They are not based on sound economic principles. Government is only able to transfer wealth from productive parts of the economy to unproductive parts of the economy.
If this ends up being a poor investment and Domitar bails then the government has two options.
Pull out – unions get pissed, people lose jobs.
Plow more money into the failed venture – no one loses jobs, unions are happy, taxpayers are a little miffed but most of them don’t vote for the NDP anyways.
Which option do you think the government is going to choose?
http://www.nowpublic.com/ethanol_may_not_be_the_miracle_its_made_out_to_be
“As Jerry Taylor reminded us in his interview on “20/20,” when ethanol is produced “it takes a lot of fossil fuels to make the fertilizer, to run the tractor, to build the silo, to get that corn to a processing plant, to run the processing plant.” Then there’s the energy it takes to move the ethanol around. Because ethanol degrades, it’s not possible to transport it in pipelines like we do oil, so using ethanol means putting many more polluting trucks on the road to deliver it.”
I say feed the corn to the starving!
You know, there is a reason why the plant was shut down. Government money isn’t going to change world markets, just put good money to waste. It actually ties in with the death of the paper media. Pulp & paper industry has declined drastically in Canada for some time now. Name a region of Canada and I can find a mill or three that is shut down or at reduced capacity.
Steve’s ideals reflect more of the socialist government approach than free enterprise. Tell Lorne I said hi.
We have to do something with our lumber. It’s a renewable resource. But we shouldn’t give it away.
Most Pulp and paper companies go to 3rd world countries where it’s cheaper to do buisness. We are not a 3rd world country. You need wood to build houses so why are our mills closing down? It’s like our oil. We charge a lesser royalty than Alberta does and it’s still not good enough.Our city council gives Superstore and Walmart a tax break for 5 years. Like otherwise they wouldn’t have built stores here?? They try to pull the same shit all the time. We owe them so much. Why do we kissass these buisnesses so much??
When ‘Steve’ stated that all political parties are the same basically, he/she/it obviously was not around during the time of one Pierre Elliot Trudueau.
What Cdn political party, other than the Liberals, went around calling Western Canadians ‘racists, rednecks and bigots’ because they didn’t agree with the mentally disturbed Trudeau and his delusional, warped, ethnocentric vision of the country?
And then it was the Liberal PM Chretien that REWARDED Sheila Copps to Deputy PM, to rub Western Canada’s political noses in the dirt, after she stated during an election campaign that any Westerners that voted for the Reform were ‘racists, rednecks and bigots’.
Steve, if you are going to give political morality lessons to the readers of this blog, then you had better brush up on the real history of Cdn politics first.
Not the Liberal sanitized version.
All Cdn political parties are definitely NOT the same. Nor are the leaders.
And only a federal Liberal apologist would try to pretend that they are.
The Crooked Liberal Party of Canada is a hell of a lot more sleazy than any of the others ever could be.
Sleep tight.
If re-opening the Prince Albert pulp and paper mill was such a profitable venture, Domtar would have done so months ago.
Instead of giving cash to Domtar, Lorne should have granted a yearly tax-free salary to former workers not yet re-employed. That would have bought him votes, and cost the taxpayers less money!
Call the election already, Lorne. Sask. can’t see your backside soon enough!
We’ve had a fairly scandal free gov’t here Sask. The other party ,the Sask/Tory party is still trying to live down it’s past. It now distances itself from a lot of extreme policies as to make out they are defenders of medicare,crown corp and every other kooky Tory idea they’ve had. I smell a rat just like the rats in 1982. I hope people know what they’re getting in the Sask/Tory party because I know if they get in we will regret it.
Scandal free!!!
What about the spudco lies the Meadow lake pulp mill lies the SGI scam in Ontario?
ok4ua get your head out of the sand I can go on for hours and sometimes do about the NDP lies. Shall we go back to Channel lake.
Where are the Broe boys?
Lorne better get his old ferret teeth back to start shredding.
The Devine Tories just about destroyed a great province because of policy. There was no thought given. “There is so much money you couldn’t possibly mismanage it” And I said mostly scandal free. No one in the NDP caucus got any money from our taxpayers. How many former Tory ministers got cushy jobs as consultants for selling off our assets. The NDP has had 14 blanced budgets in spite of the efforts of the oppostion to discredit them. They are so ashamed of their Tory past they changed their name to the Sask?Party.Like they’re defenders of Sask?? Not in this lifetime.
more lies:
Only one of the last 14 budgets was balanced by standard accounting methods. Balanced does not mean running up more debt! The Calvert gov has increased the provincial debt by three fold. Check stats Canada!
How was CIC turned over to Calverts cronies after severance packages were given to them.
What assets have the NDP sold just recently??
Try to tell me an NDP supporter never got a cushy job.
During the Devine years there was a recession and droughts, all the provinces including Alberta increased debt at the time.
The Calvert gov. is increasing the debt in a boom economy while the population has dropped
“The deal will see the pulp mill only open … but not the paper mill. I know nothing about pulp, nor paper. But, do they not go together? What do you do with pulp? … besides make paper.”
Pulp production capacity can be integrated or market. Most pulping capacity is integrated – paper mills make the pulp and use it themselves. If they have no or insufficient pulping capacity for the paper they want to make they buy the pulp on the open market. They may also buy pulp that has particular properties that they need to add to the papermaking furnish to produce the paper characteristics they need. I don’t have current statistics, but let’s say that 15% of the pulp comes from market pulp mills. That means that any swings in the price of / market for paper are amplified in the price of market pulp since papermakers will stop buying from outside sources before they stop using their internally manufactured pulp. So the market pulp business can be very good or very bad. It is “volatile”. Thus there is a tendency to go “value added” aka build a paper machine to add to your pulp mill.
There was a pulp mill in PA and then the owners built a paper machine to use some or all of the pulp (I don’t know which). In the last years of operation Weyerco looked at all their mills and PA was relatively inefficient compared to its other mills and it chose to shut it down after it failed to improve that efficiency. I do not know if they failed because nobody believed them and would not co-operate in making the mill more efficient or because there are other insurmountable systemic problems. Weyerco are generally considered to be good operators and I have heard the union work practices at PA were horrendously inefficient and accompanied by a fair bit of intransigence over any efforts to improve productivity. I have no firsthand knowledge of that operation.
You use pulp to make paper or paper products or sanitary products such as diapers or feminine hygiene products. Typically “fluff grade” pulp goes into the the latter. PA did not make fluff grade, but paper grade pulp. The only reason I mention fluff grade is super-absorbents started being used in diaper manufacturing ten or fifteen years ago and greatly reduced the amount of pulp required to make a diaper. A lot of the pulp formerly used for that entered the market to compete.
“Where and how do we ship this valuable pulp to someone smart enough to do something with it?”
Pulp is priced at more or less the same price everywhere in the world in $US dollars. It is shipped some to the USA and Canada, but mostly to papermills in Europe and Asia. Places where they have insufficient fibre of their own. China has built a lot of paper mills and has not kept up with pulping capacity.
“DOMTAR will sell “green energy” to Saskpower. First, I don’t know what “green energy” is, besides what plants do. I look at any pulp plant and I can SEE they consume energy. How do you sell a negative quantity? (I obviously am showing my lack of knowledge here … help?)”
The Kraft (German for “strong”) process used in PA for pulping is probably a net or neutral producer of energy in its own right. In addition, PA built a wood waste boiler a few years ago that would be considered “green” since if you harvest wood it tends to grow back unless you remove the land from the forest base by farming the clear cut land.
Kraft or sulphate pulping was an environmental improvement over sulphite pulping and made a pulp fibre that would make a stronger paper. In sulphite pulping you dissolve the glues holding the fibre together and then puke the glues and the chemicals you used to dissolve them into the nearest bay or river. In the sulphate process (used in PA) you dissolve the glues and then burn them in a recovery boiler generating steam for the process and power generation plus recovering the chemicals for re-use in making more pulp. One proposed Kraft mill in Malaysia will produce enough excess energy to run a BCTMP mill such as the Meadow Lake pulp mill (even more environmentally friendly, but a real energy consumer).
Hope that helps. I have written 5,000 word papers on pulp and paper marketing.