By: E&P Staff Canada is promising its pulp and paper industry a package of C$1 billion (US$881.8 million) to help mills that believe they have been put at a competitive disadvantage by a far-bigger virtual subsidy for U.S. producers.
Canadian paper producers have already shed some 55,000 workers, and paper union and industry leaders say the Conservative government's support is too little and too late.
"This is a cruel joke on the 55,000 forest workers who have lost their jobs and this proposal will do absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, to put them back to work," Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, told The Toronto Star, which reported on the program Thursday.
Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt said the package is the government response to a U.S. subsidy that the Canadian paper industry says amounts to some $8 billion. Under the U.S. economic stimulus plan, American paper and pulp makers are eligible for tax credits for using "black liquor" fuel from the pulping process to heat and run mills.
The Canadian plan will be funded by a subsidy for black liquor used by the mills for energy. The mills must invest the money in becoming more efficient or environmentally friendly.
"We want to make sure that when we're coming out of the recession, we've given all the tools we can to the forestry industry to meet the demands" of the pulp and paper market, Raitt said, according to the Star account by Ottawa bureau reporter Les Whittington.
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