Ontario Green Party leader Frank de Jong believes the province should be encouraging more value-added forestry practices rather than trying to prop up money losing primary mills.

Ontario Green Party leader Frank de Jong believes the province should be encouraging more value-added forestry practices rather than trying to prop up money losing primary mills.
“Subsidies are not a good idea because it will encourage companies to continue non-economical and non-ecologically sustainable activity,” de Jong said.
He pointed to the mechanization of the forest sector and the years of job cuts in the industry as proof that the future of Northern Ontario doesn’t lie in the traditional primary production like newsprint and two by fours.
“Business as usual has to change,” he said.
De Jong said the benefits of labour intensive value-added production are two-fold. He said less trees will be used in the production of the finished products while jobs will stay in the north.
“I’d like to see more forest left alone and set aside from clearcutting,” de Jong said.
The Greens propose a radical tax-shifting strategy to encourage companies to use less natural resources, while employing more people in their processes. The Greens would increase stumpage fees and other charges to use trees and natural resources while at the same time lowering or eliminating personal and corporate income taxes.
“We want companies to be successful so we shouldn’t tax their profits,” he said.
By making it more advantageous for the forest companies to employ people rather than use a lot of fibre, de Jong said it would help stem the youth out-migration which is causing many communities in the north to see population declines.
It would take the tax-shifting strategies a number of years to become effective as existing companies and newcomers adjust to the market conditions. Money would have to be spent building new plants or retrofitting old ones.
In the meantime de Jong noted the government must take steps to help people affected by the spectre of large scale mill closures.
“There are short-term issues and there are long-term issues and you have to be sensitive to that,” he said.
De Jong said the province should focus any money it spends on forestry in helping companies become more innovative and to develop new technology for value-added production.
At the same time the Green Party said the government should encourage companies to build environmentally friendly power production facilities. De Jong said in some parts of the province that means more investment in wind power, while in Northern Ontario it can include more biomass co-generation plants. He said the power plants could be built off the grid to service the forest industry.
“It increases local reliability,” de Jong said.