Struggling in Dubreuilville: Sawmill operator frustrated by wood competition.

• Author: Ross, Ian

One of Canada's last great company towns will not go down without a fight, said its sawmill general manager.

Dubreuil Forest Products (DFP) mill manager Dave Jennings said despite the government's rejection of his company's application for Grown fibre in the provincial wood supply competition, the dimensional lumber producer will find a way to carry on.

"We're going to fight on, we're not going to quit, we're not going to go away and we're going to do whatever it takes to ensure that the community and the mill survives."

Jennings called the province's plan to put Crown wood back to work "anything but fair" and said the Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry's (MNDMF) decision to strip his mill of wood supply will "imperil the town" and affect future livelihoods.

Jennings is part of a campaign to save the franco-Ontarian town of 773. Established in the early 1960s by the Dubreuil brothers who built a sawmill just off the Trans-Canada Highway, north of Wawa, the idled mill had been limping along for most of the past decade.

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The U.S. homebuilding slump and economic crash forced the shutdown of the sawmill and planer operation in June 2008, forcing the layoff of 225.

Jennings blasted the ministry in an April letter to Northern Development, Mines and Forestry Minister Michael Gravelle after the company's application to retain its annual softwood allocation of 196,000 cubic metres for the Magpie Forest was rejected. The company also asked for an additional 296,000 cubic metres of softwood from the Big Pic Forest in a plan to recall workers and operate the more modern side of the mill when North American lumber markets recover.

The wood traditionally allocated to Dubreuil went to Terrace Bay Pulp, Haavaldsrud sawmill in Hornepayne and Lecours Lumber in Hearst.

The Terrace Bay wood (part of the troubled Buchanan Forest Products chain) was withdrawn from the competition as part of the refinancing negotiations with lender Callidus Capital to restart the mill last October.

Jennings takes issue with the ministry's selection criteria based on a points scoring system, in particular its evaluation of the social and economic benefits of the Dubreuil proposal, which scored three of 30.

Jennings said to suggest that a mill, woven into the town's social fabric, that has provided economic benefits to the region for 50 years, "doesn't contribute anything in terms of social or economic benefits is just ludicrous."

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