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Northern Pulp mill plans “best in class” or best in BS?

The Paper Excellence company that is part of the global corporate empire of the Widjaja family has submitted plans for the “transformation” of its hibernating pulp mill to the Nova Scotia government for approval, even as it sues the same government for hundreds of millions of dollars.

December 17, 2021 By Joan Baxter 3 Comments

Northern Pulp is claiming that the changes it’s proposing for its 54-year-old pulp mill in Pictou County will make it “best in class.” Even the blurb that appears on the Nova Scotia Environment and Climate Change page for the “mill transformation and effluent treatment facility project” includes the phrase “best in class.” And although Northern […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured, Investigation Tagged With: 1057863 B.C. Ltd., 3243722 Nova Scotia Limited, 3253527 Nova Scotia Limited, A’se’K, Abercrombie Point, AP&P, Asia Pulp & Paper, Boat Harbour, British Columbia Supreme Court, British Virgin Islands, Bruce Chapman, Canso Chemicals, Catalyst Paper, climate change, climate crisis, Companies" Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), Competition Bureau of Canada, Domtar, Eldorado Brasil Celulose pulp mill, Environmental Paper Network, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), France, Friends of the Northumberland Strait, FSC, Golden Agri Resources, Graham Kissack, greenhouse gases, Greenpeace, Hervey Investment BV, Inter-corporate Ownership index, Jill Graham Scanlan, Jim Ryan, Kamloops pulp mill, Karta Halten B.V., MacKenzie pulp mill, Maurice Chiasson, mercury, Northern Pulp, Northern Pulp Mill, Northern Pulp Nova Scotia, Northern Pulp Nova Scotia LP, Northern Pulp NS GP ULC, Northern Resources Nova Scotia Corporation, Northern Timber Nova Scotia Corporation, Northern Timber Nova Scotia LP, Northumberland Strait, Nova Scotia Envrionment and Climate Change, Olin Corporation, Paper Excellence, Paper Excellence Canada Holdings Corporation, Pictou, Pictou Harbour, Pictou Landing First Nation, Powell River pulp mill, pulp mill, Robert Grant, Scott Paper, Sinar Mas, Sinar Mas Group, Singapore, Statistics Canada, tax havens, Tax Justice Network, The Netherlands, Widjaja family

Why isn’t Northern Pulp using the wastewater treatment plant next door at Canso Chemicals? Is mercury an issue?

November 5, 2021 By Joan Baxter 2 Comments

Northern Pulp is using $450,000 dollars to sue Nova Scotians for what could be hundreds of millions of dollars, and the money for the litigation comes from the interim financing its creditor protection in the British Columbia Supreme Court affords it. But the Paper Excellence company doesn’t seem interested in spending any money to put […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Environment, Featured Tagged With: Abercrombie Point, Bay of Fundy, British Columbia Supreme Court, Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, Canso Chemicals, Central Colchester Wastewater Treatment Facility, Choong Wei Tan, creditor protection, David McNeill, Dillon Consulting, East River, landfill, leachate, mercury, ministerial order, Northern Pulp, Northern Resources Nova Scotia Corporation, Northern Timber Nova Scotia Corporation, Nova Scotia Environment and Climate Change (NSECC), Olin Corporation, Paper Excellence, Paper Excellence Canada, Pictou Harbour, Pierre Ducharme, runoff, Salmon River, Sean Lewis, Tracy Barron, wastewater

What are Paper Excellence’s real plans for Northern Pulp?

This week two men presented the company’s plans for a “complete transformation” of the the mill at a special Pictou Town Council meeting. They faced persistent questions and made some telling comments that do not bode well for Nova Scotia.

July 21, 2021 By Joan Baxter 10 Comments

Paper Excellence is on a desperate charm offensive in Nova Scotia, trying to build “trust,” get support to refit and re-open its Pictou County Northern Pulp mill, make people believe that the company has somehow transformed itself overnight, and convince us all to forget its many egregious environmental, social, and political transgressions and bullying tactics. […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured Tagged With: A’se’K, Biodiversity Act, Boat Harbour, Boat Harbour Act, Bowater lands, British Columbia, Caribou Harbour, Chief Andrea Paul, COunty of Pictou Council, creditor protection, Crown land, Cumberland Forestry Advisory Committee, Dale Paterson, Darrell Dexter, Duff Montgomerie, Effluent Treatment Facility, Environmental Liaison Committee, Forest Nova Scotia, GI Smith, Graham Kissack, Jerry Dias, Jim Ryan, Ken Swain, Melinda MacKenzie, Nadine LeBlanc, NDP government, Northern Pulp, Northern pulp creditor protection, Nova Scotia Lands, Paper Excellence, Pedro Chang, pension plan, Pensions, Pictou, Pictou Harbour, Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), Pictou Town Council, pipeline, pulp effluent, pulp mill, Resolute Forest Products, Robert Stanfield, Scott Maritimes Limited Agreement Act, Stellarton Town Council, Stephen McNeil, Supreme Court of British Columbia, Unifor, Wagner Forest Management, Wentworth Valley, WestFor Management, Westville Town Council

Paper Excellence holds a media show and piles on the PR

Northern Pulp’s owner is working on a $350 million “complete transformation” for the mill in Pictou County, but doesn’t say whether any of that money will be public, or why Nova Scotians should trust them.

July 16, 2021 By Joan Baxter 7 Comments

On the morning of July 15, Iris Communications’ Sean Lewis sent out a press release on behalf of Paper Excellence. It was chockablock with carefully calibrated and curated PR, informing us that Northern Pulp’s 54-year-old pulp mill in Pictou County was set to become “a “best-in-class operation” and “one of the world’s cleanest, most environmentally […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured, News Tagged With: AP&P, Asia Pulp & Paper, Boat Harbour, CBC, Chief Andrea Paul, Class I, Class II, clearcutting, Companies" Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), Dale Paterson, Darrell Dexter, Domtar, Effluent Treatment Facility, Eldorado Brasil Celulose, environmental assessment, Environmental Liaison Committee, Fibre Excellence, forestry, France, Graham Kissack, herbicide, Iris Communications, Lahey report, Mi'kmaq, Michael Gorman, no pipe, Northern Pulp, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia Environment, Paper Excellence, Paper Excellence B.V., Paper Excellence Canada Holdings Corporation, Pictou, Pictou County, Pictou Harbour, Pictou Landing First Nation, pulp mill, Sean Lewis, Sinar Mas, Supreme Court of British Columbia, Widjaja family

Northern Pulp Mill’s missing environmental data

The mill says its effluent comfortably meets federal regulations, but a new study published by Dalhousie researchers suggests there is no way to know.

July 8, 2019 By Joan Baxter 1 Comment

Cover photo courtesy Gerard James Halfyard. If Premier Stephen McNeil is wavering on the Northern Pulp / Paper Excellence file, entertaining notions on amending the Boat Harbour Act so that effluent from the Pictou County pulp mill can continue to flow into the lagoon after January 31, 2020, he would do well to put off […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured, Investigation, News, Province House Tagged With: Alison Reilander, Boat Harbour, Boat Harbour Act, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA), Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Canso Chemicals, Chief Andrea Paul, chlorine, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, dioxins and furans, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), environmental studies, Friends of the Northumberland Strait, Gerard James Halfyard, Jessica Romo, Matt Dort, Meenakshi Chaudhary, mercury, Minister Margaret Miller, Northern Pulp Mill, Northumberland Strait, Pictou Harbour, Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), Premier Stephen McNeil, Pulp and Paper Effluent Regulations (PPER), Terri Fraser, Tony R. Walker

Nova Scotia has a mercury problem

Facilities associated with Northern Pulp Mill's proposed effluent pipe are immediately adjacent to a mercury-contaminated toxic waste site left over from the Canso Chemicals operation

April 9, 2019 By Joan Baxter 2 Comments

Cover photo: A Mad Tea-Party by Lewis Carroll with the Hatter, March Hare and Alice. It turns out that using a lot of mercury, as human beings have done for centuries — in everything from haberdashery to gold production to medicine — wasn’t such a great idea after all. Although this realization came only in […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured, Investigation, News, Province House Tagged With: Abercrombie Point, Adele Poirier, Canso Chemicals, David Depew, Dillon Consulting, Domtar, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), erithism mercurialis, Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan (FCSAP), gold mines, Grassy Narrows First Nation, Liberal Party fundraiser, Linda M Campbell, mercury, mine tailings, Minimata Convention on Mercury, Minimata disease, Neil M Burgess, Northern Pulp Mill, Nova Scotia Environment (NSE), Olin Corporation, Paper Excellence, Peter Hodson, Pictou Harbour, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Reed Paper, United Nations Environment (UNEP), Wabaseemoong First Nation, Wabigoon River

The Canso Chemicals mystery: With the chemical plant long gone, why is the company still alive? And what about all that mercury pollution?

March 7, 2019 By Joan Baxter 6 Comments

Canso Chemicals hasn’t produced any chemicals for 29 years, but — contrary to what I wrote in the Halifax Examiner in “Northern Pulp’s environmental documents: missing mercury, a pulp mill that never was, and oodles of contradictions” — the company lives on. Sort of. For two decades Canso Chemicals produced chlorine for the pulping process […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Environment, Featured, Investigation, Province House Tagged With: Abercrombie Point, Canadian Industries Limited (CIL), Canso Chemicals, Choong Wei Tan, Curtis Richards, Dillon Consulting, Ferguson MacKay, Fisheries Minister Jack Davis, Friends of the Northumberland Strait (FONS), ICI Canada, Jack Pink, Jill Graham Scanlan, John M. Olin Foundation, mercury, Minimata disease, Northern Pulp, Northern Resources Nova Scotia Corporation, Nova Scotia Pulp Ltd., Olin Corporation, Pictou Harbour, Pierre Ducharme, Pioneer Chemicals Limited, Pioneer Companies LLC, Scott Maritimes, Seymore Thomas Dewtie, Sinar Mas Group, Widjaja family

Northern Pulp’s environmental documents: missing mercury, a pulp mill that never was, and oodles of contradictions

March 5, 2019 By Joan Baxter 9 Comments

Cover photo: “Point D,” where treated Northern Pulp wastewater currently flows from Boat Harbour into the Northumberland Strait, just a few hundred metres from Pictou Landing First Nation. There is much to wade through in the documents Northern Pulp submitted to Nova Scotia Environment on February 7, 2019, when it registered its “Replacement Effluent Treatment […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Environment, Featured, Investigation, News, Province House Tagged With: Bell Bay Tasmania, Boat Harbour, Bruce Chapman, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA), Canso Chemicals, Chief Andrea Paul, Clean the Mill Group, Dave Gunning, Dillon Consulting, dioxins and furans, Dr. John Krawczyk, Environment Minister Iain Rankin, Environment Minister Margaret Miller, Gary Porter, Greg Egilsson, Gulf NS Herring Federation, Human Health Risk Assessment (HHRA), Jamie Simpson, Kathy Cloutier, KSH Consulting, mercury, Mi’kmaq Conservation Group, Northern Pulp, Northern Pulp effluent, Northern Pulp environmental assessment, Nova Scotia Environment, oxygen delignification system, Paper Excellence Canada, Pictou Harbour, Pictou Landing, Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), Point D, Rachel Boomer, Terri Fraser, Toxikos

PRICED OUT

A collage of various housing options in HRM, including co-ops, apartment buildings, shelters, and tents
PRICED OUT is the Examiner’s investigative reporting project focused on the housing crisis.

You can learn about the project, including how we’re asking readers to direct our reporting, our published articles, and what we’re working on, on the PRICED OUT homepage.

2020 mass murders

Nine images illustrating the locations, maps, and memorials of the mass shootings

All of the Halifax Examiner’s reporting on the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020, and recent articles on the Mass Casualty Commission and newly-released documents.

Updated regularly.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Two young white women, one with dark hair and one blonde, smile at the camera on a sunny spring day.

Episode 79 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne, is published.

Grace McNutt and Linnea Swinimer are the Minute Women, two Haligonians who host a podcast of the same name about Canadian history as seen through a lens of Heritage Minutes (minutewomenpodcast.ca). In a lively celebration of the show’s second birthday, they stop by to reveal how curling brought them together in podcast — and now BFF — form, their favourite Minutes, that time they thought Jean Chretien was dead, and the impact their show has had. Plus music from brand-new ECMA winners Hillsburn and Zamani.

Listen to the episode here.

Check out some of the past episodes here.

Subscribe to the podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your device — there’s a great instructional article here. Email Suzanne for help.

You can reach Tara here.

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Recent posts

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  • There’s no meaning in mass murder May 16, 2022
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