Cascades is temporarily shutting Scierie Lemay, putting 200 people out of a job. The company’s facilities in Ascens…
Cascades is temporarily shutting Scierie Lemay, putting 200 people out of a job. The company’s facilities in Ascension will also be closed, as will those of its subsidiary Rabotage Lemay in Saint-Franois-de-Sales.
The closure affects all sawmill activities, including those of the lumber and planing mills, along with all forestry operations.
Cascades hopes to start up production as soon as possible. In a statement the company confirmed short-term market prospects are ‘hardly encouraging and make it difficult to contemplate such a resumption without some form of support from the different levels of government.’
According to Hubert Bolduc, vice president of communications and public affairs for Cascades, what the company is seeking, along with many other forestry companies with operations in Quebec, is government support when it comes to the amount of money it costs to cut wood on Crown Land.
“In Ontario, it costs $6 per cubic metre to cut wood on crown land. In Quebec, it costs $17. That’s almost three times as much. We feel, and it’s not only Cascades, that an effort on behalf of the government needs to be made,” he said. “Also, the news just broke that Abitibi-Consolidated is closing four Quebec sawmills, that will be 700 people without jobs. And they’re saying the exact same thing as us.”
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