Chapleau mill gets $1.5 million cheque, nice photo-op says NDP

 
Chapleau's Niska North sawmill received a $1.5 million cheque from the province to become one of the largest cedar manufacturers in eastern Canada.
The sawmill will create up to 40 jobs over the next three years. Niska North produces high-quality cedar and white pine lumber to make log homes, flooring, decking and other products.
The province previously invested $320,000 in 2008 to help the company get started.
Local First Nations investors own 51 per cent of the mill.
"This new mill demonstrates how the forest industry remains the economic lifeblood of many small Northern Ontario communities and that it can adapt to changing market demands and challenges," said Northern Development and Mines Minister Michael Gravelle in an April 15 statement.
It was a great "feel-good" photo op, said NDP leader Andrea Horwath, but the McGuinty government continues to sit on a pile of unspent forestry assistance money that struggling Northern communities can use.
Last month, the NDP discovered that nearly two-thirds, or $91.8 million out of $150 million -- of the government's Forest Sector Prosperity Fund remains uncommitted at the close of the program.
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the NDP found that more than $280 million of the $350 million allocated to the Loan Guarantee Program remained unused despite the government's claim that the entire amount would be invested by the end of 2006.
"If the McGuinty Liberals think that today's photo op will make up for the thousands of forestry jobs that have been lost across the North since they've been in power, they're wrong," said Horwath in a statement.