Nova Scotia NDP to ask Natural Resources Committee to look into Paper Excellence
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In an interview with the Halifax Examiner, Nova Scotia NDP leader Claudia Chender said she had been following the media coverage of Paper Excellence that emerged from an investigation undertaken jointly by the Examiner, CBC, Glacier Media, Le Monde and Radio France, which was part of the global Deforestation Inc. project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
“The investigation is obviously very concerning,” Chender said. While she’s been in the legislature since 2017 and the Northern Pulp story is not new to her, Chender said the provincial NDP had not been aware of the “complexity of the ownership of Paper Excellence, or its reach in Canada.”
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Chender said Northern Pulp’s continued lease on Crown land in the absence of an operating mill is one of the issues about Paper Excellence that the NDP are hoping to have discussed by the province’s Natural Resources Committee.
“We know that the lease comes up again [for renewal] in July,” Chender said. “This is one of the reasons we’d like to have this in committee, to see what the strategy is around that lease and what the details are. It’s very difficult to find the details around that lease. Hopefully we could get answers to those questions in the committee setting.”
Chender noted as the third party in the legislature, the NDP can get only one topic onto the agenda, so it may be “at least a few months” before they are able to get Paper Excellence discussed by the Natural Resources Committee.
The complexity of the Northern Pulp case
Chender said that she’s been following the media investigation into Paper Excellence with interest, and that even before that, she was closely tracking the Boat Harbour Act, and what happened subsequently.
The Boat Harbour Act, passed in 2015 under the former Liberal government of Stephen McNeil, stipulated that Northern Pulp, owned since 2011 by Paper Excellence, stop using Boat Harbour for its pulp effluent by January 2020.
Northern Pulp failed to get environmental approval for its proposed replacement effluent treatment facility and plan to pipe the treated effluent into the Northumberland Strait by that time, and thus the mill went into hibernation.
Since then, Paper Excellence has submitted a new proposal for modernizing the pulp mill that is undergoing a Class II environmental assessment with Nova Scotia Environment and Climate Change.
Chender noted that the issues around the pulp mill, its creditor protection, and lawsuit against the province create “a lot of complexity.” She said another piece of the complexity is “the employment situation in rural Nova Scotia, which has always been a big piece of the Northern Pulp story, from the very beginning,” and something she believes is a “rare point of alignment” between the NDP, Liberals, and the Progressive Conservatives.
Chender added that the NDP “were glad to see the Boat Harbour Act passed,” and also enforced, although they had pushed for stronger environmental regulations. “Northern Pulp’s assertion that somehow they’re being unfairly subjected to rigorous standards doesn’t sit well with us,” she said. “We’re kind of waiting to see what happens.”
An NDP riding association in British Columbia has passed a motion calling on the NDP in that province to investigate Paper Excellence following the Deforestation Inc. investigation. But Chender noted that the NDP are in power in British Columbia, meaning they could launch a provincial government investigation.
Chender added that the ongoing litigation against Nova Scotia by Paper Excellence makes it difficult to comment on the company “in the political sphere.”
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