Green Party unveils plan to create new Forestry Act

The Green Party is taking a stand against the state of forestry production in New Brunswick.

Leader David Coon announced Monday the party would cancel current contracts, signed by the Alward government and create a new sustainable Forestry Act. Their aim is to give back some control to independent mills in New Brunswick.

Private investor Murray Munn spent his life working in forestry just like his father and grandfather before him. The nearby Maritime Fibre and Energy mill has been forced to close, no longer able to afford to buy wood for processing.

We don't want to be millionaires, Munn said. We just want to work, make a living and not have to work for nothing.

Coon says that is why the Green Party would change the way the industry is managed, making drastic changes to the legislation.

Can you imagine if McDonalds controlled the access to ground beef for Relish restaurants in Fredericton, he said. If they could not get their ground meat because McDonald's controlled the supply, they'd be out of business and that's exactly what's happening to independent mills in the province.

He says the large forestry companies have been given control over New Brunswick Crown lands and that means there is not fair access to resources, to independent mills or to First Nations.

We want to bring fairness to the system so that the large companies like Irving no longer control the nature of the access to our forest resources on Crown land, Coon said. That control has to be broken and has to be put back in the hands of the people.

Coon says millions of dollars of modern equipment is sitting idle at the Maritime Fibre and Energy mill when it could be running and creating jobs for up to 60 people.

Investors say it wouldn't be cost-prohibitive to get this mill up and running again.

Andrew Clark, the former president of the Federation of Woodlot Owners and now a Green Party candidate says these changes would end up creating more jobs.

If we could just get primary source back, we can create more than 500 jobs, harvesting jobs on private woodlots to sell and I am quite confident that there will be other mills that will employ people, it shouldn't be the choice of the government to decide which mills are going to run, Clark said.

Operators of the Maritime Fibre and Energy mill say they have employees waiting to come back to work. They say the mill could be up and running tomorrow, if they could afford to buy wood.