Wood for jobs

When Sandy Smith first started producing sample core trays for the diamond mining industry he made about 2,000 a year.

With the explosion in the mining industry, he’s now got orders for 40,000 a month. To do it he needs wood. On Monday the owner of Thunder Bay’s Garden Lake Timber was officially unveiled as one of 11 companies who have officially accepted the province’s wood supply offer, part of a 765,700 cubic metre allocation.

All told the province put nine million cubic metres of untouched wood into the mix when they called for proposals a year ago. They received 115 proposals, a mixture of traditional and new-forest uses. Smith’s Garden Lake Timber was one of three local companies to accept the province’s allocation offer. To date 15 have accepted, with another 15 throughout Northern Ontario mulling them over.

Smith, who hosted Monday’s news conference, said his company’s access to wood will help create at least two more jobs, adding to the eight already employed at the company, located at the base of Mount Baldy.

It’s a security blanket, he added.

“With this allotment of fibre we now have something we haven’t had for 30 years, an assured wood supply,” Smith said.

“This gives us something we can rely on, we know it will be there,” he said later. “So hopefully that lets us expand and move into the future.”

Forestry Minister Michael Gravelle said he’s pleased the wood supply competition is putting people and the forests back to work, even a few at a time. The province lost thousands of jobs when the bottom fell out of the industry during the mid-2000s.

“That was one of our goals, to allow new entrants to get access to fibre they previously had very real difficulty accessing, so that’s good news.”

Smith also said he hopes it helps lower the cost of doing business.

Pays Plat First Nation Chief Xavier Thompson didn’t hesitate to make an application for a start-up firewood supply company expected to provide employment in the community of 60, where jobs are not easy to come by.

“This is going to fully employ five people. Getting jobs on the reserve is quite challenging. It takes us one step closer to prosperity,” Thompson said. “It was really tough finding any industry for our little First Nation. Obviously you think wood. I’m glad that we’re moving forward and this is just the beginning.”

Pays Plat were given an annual allotment of 10,000 white birch trees.

And it’s not just the little guys who are benefiting.

AbiBow Canada Inc., who operates a sawmill on Fort William First Nation, is getting the largest annual allotment, 221,000 cubic metres of conifer trees.

Company spokesman Roger Barber said though his company has faced restructuring at both the national and local levels in the face of the forestry and debt financing collapses, they’ve managed to continuously operate the Thunder Bay mill and are in fact looking to expand.

This will allow them to do so, Barber said.

“The wood supply offer is going to allow us to expand the capacity of our sawmill by about 15 to 20 per cent and create about 50 jobs,” he said.

Province-wide the 11 announcements, which include allocations to companies in Sudbury, Harcourt, Bracebridge and Lake Temagami, will create about 163 jobs and sustain 404.