Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli doubts the Liberals are serious about seeing a wood mill in Fort Frances reopen and employing one thousand people. Fedeli arranged a news conference for Mayors and First Nation leaders from the northwest at Queens Park to draw attention to their plight. He gave a lot of notice but Fedeli says suddenly Premier Kathleen Wynne called her own news conference for the same time to negate his event. He calls Wynne’s announcement bogus because it simply involved parliamentary assistants. He adds her announcement was designed to ruin his news conference to draw attention to the Fort Frances issue. As for the mill, Fedeli says it can’t re-open because the Liberals won’t increase wood allocations for timber cutting. He says since taking power, the Liberals have cut wood allocations by half and that’s why eight out of 10 mills in the north have closed. When the Tories were in power Fedeli says 26-million cubic metres of wood were harvested annually. He says that number was sustainable then and still is, despite what the Liberals claim.
