The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
When lumber giant Tolko announced in early 2006 that it would close its The Pas operations unless the financial picture brightened, provincial politicians were quick to respond. Then-premier Gary Doer promptly pumped $7 million worth of grants into the company. Later, when unionized workers voted down a do-or-die contract revision, Mr. Doer flew to The Pas to personally convince them to reconsider, which they did. In the end, Tolko stayed open and hundreds upon hundreds of direct and indirect jobs survived this close call. Government intervention had succeeded in essentially tossing The Pas a life preserver. An awful lot of people in Flin Flon and area were hoping that Mr. Doer or his successor, Greg Selinger, would play the white knight and similarly rescue the HBMS smelter. Of course that never happened. If the province ever even discussed with HBMS concrete ways to avert the closure, the matter was kept hush-hush. And that would be totally uncharacteristic of a government that can't buy coffee for a hobo without issuing a self-congratulatory press release. So was this simply the latest episode of provincial favouritism toward The Pas over Flin Flon? Possibly. But I doubt it. Many local leaders felt the government, either provincially or federally, would "save" the smelter. One elected official told me flat out that the then-Doer government "wouldn't let" a closure happen in this era of business bailouts. Everyday citizens chimed in, too, offering thoughts on how HBMS could make the smelter feasible and, in the longer term, less of an environmental concern Ð all with the aide of a big fat government cheque, of course. That big fat cheque did not arrive, if HBMS even wanted it. It seems everyone was pondering ways of preserving the smelter without stopping to consider whether the means actually existed. A mirror image of this situation is playing itself out right now in Timmins, Ontario, whose Kidd Creek copper smelter is due to cease May 1. A week ago, a union representing affected workers put out a news release stating that the Ontario government should not "allow" Xstrata, the owner of the smelter, to shutter the facility. The union said Xstrata continues to profit from mining and smelting, that Canadian smelters should ideally process Canadian ore, and that the closure will harm the community by slashing jobs. All very good points. The union also made the case for some sort of legislation that would require Ontario ore to be smelted in Ontario, but the province evidently sees more cons than pros in that concept. As much as governments love flaunting their job-saving credentials, the decision to close a smelter, whether in Flin Flon or Timmins, rests entirely with its owners. While the Manitoba government did not "save" the smelter as some hoped, they have announced a revamped UCN campus that can re-train any laid-off workers for new opportunities in mining and other fields. That's good, because an educated worker is one who can and will bounce back. Local Angle runs Fridays.
