Resolute Responds

Today’s Chronicle Journal had a one-page ad by Resolute Forest Products written in response to a Chronicle Journal editorial on July 18^th entitled “Innovation But When”.   In the response, Resolute maintains that the editorial implies that there has been no capital investment or pro-active action taken by any Canadian or North American company relative to the forest products industry.  Resolute then proceeds to list the major capital projects it has recently announced: a 54 million dollar investment for improvements to a wood waste boiler and steam turbine installation at the Resolute Thunder Bay mill, an 8 million dollar upgrade of its sawmill complex, a 30 million dollar investment in the idled Ignace mill and another 20 million dollars at the newsprint mill in Iroquois Falls.

Resolute is justifiably miffed at being lumped in with a large chunk of the forest industry that did not invest sufficiently in its mills and met the perfect economic forestry storm of the early 21^st century with aging infrastructure and equipment. Resolute is indeed an example of a proactive and engaged forest products company and its investments are key to the survival and prosperity of the forest products industry in Thunder Bay and the Northwest.  There is also its relationship with CRIBE (Centre for Research and Innovation in the Bio-Economy) and FP Innovations, which will look at innovative ways of using forest biomass.

In Thunder Bay, Resolute is the only survivor of that economic storm with a mill complex that dates back to the 1920s.  The Resolute mill is the latest corporate incarnation of the Great Lakes Paper Company, which over time has been Great Lakes Forest Products, Canadian Pacific Forest Products, Avenor, and Abitibi-Bowater. A hallmark of the original Great Lakes Paper was that it was locally owned and an example of local Lakehead entrepreneurship.  Having our own locally owned head office meant substantial control over investment decisions and white-collar employment that deepened our local labour and professional opportunities.  Indeed, the fact that this is the only pulp mill that ultimately survived out of the four mills in Thunder Bay is a testament to the original good decision making in plant and equipment that made the company viable for resale and continued production in the long run.

Resolute is also correct in maintaining that it had to deal with economic events largely out of its control such as the appreciation of the Canadian dollar or the decline in demand for newsprint driven by the technological change of the computer age.  Indeed, taking out a one-page newspaper ad is a wonderful example of supplier- induced demand. However, Resolute has developed a selective historical memory and conveniently omits the effect of provincial government policies on the forest sector crisis.  Indeed, it was not too long ago that the North cried out in protest against provincial wood allocation and electricity price policies.  Moreover, there was the exceedingly slow response of the provincial government in realizing the extent of the crisis and finally offering some relief in areas such as electricity prices. 

Finally, it should be noted that even active management and being proactive cannot always save you from the realities of the market especially when combined with slow or ineffective government policy assistance or indeed detrimental trade policies such as the softwood lumber dispute.  Witness what has happened to the Buchanan mills even with all their energetic responses and efforts.  It is an important lesson we should not forget.

The North's Economy and Births: Bad Times Lead to Fewer Babies

The link between the economy and the number of births is an important one in both demographic and economic analysis.  One view maintains that a poor economy breeds uncertainty about the future and in turn results in families postponing children and therefore a reduction in both the number of total births as well as the birth rate.  Another view maintains that a poor economy reduces the opportunity cost of having children – that is, if you do not have a job, why not use the time to start a family – and the result would be a higher birth rate.  A lot of recent evidence from the current recession suggests that a poor economy results in fewer births. For example, the Economist Magazine recently chronicled a recent drop in fertility rates amongst European countries hit hard by the recession.

Figure 1 

 

In Ontario, a comparison of Ontario with its North – the chronic poor economic performer – also suggests that a more buoyant economy results in more births (Figure 1).  Using birth data from Statistics Canada, it appears that after a period of decline in the 1990s, total births in Ontario have been rising since 2000.  Between 2000 and 2010, total births in Ontario rose by 13 percent.  Meanwhile, between 2000 and 2010, the total number of births in Northwestern Ontario declined by 9 percent while the number in the relatively more prosperous Northeast (which had robust mining activity and a less severe forest sector downturn) actually grew by about one-half of one percent. 

Figure 2

 

If one looks at total births in Northern Ontario by region (Figure 2), many regions have stayed relatively flat in terms of the total number of births, some have declined and one in particular – Greater Sudbury and Nipissing – have seen increases over the last decade.  Indeed, much of the growth in the number of births that has occurred in the Northeast has been over the last five years reversing the declines of the late 1990s.  Between 2005 and 2010 (Figure 3), with the exception of Manitoulin, all the regions of Northeastern Ontario have posted increases in the number of births with the largest percent age increases being in Nipissing and Greater Sudbury.  Meanwhile, the Northwest has seen declines in the number of births in Rainy River and Thunder Bay and an increase only in the Kenora District.

Figure 3

 

Based on the total number of births as an indicator of economic opportunity and optimism, it would appear that over the period 2005 to 2010, the economy performed reasonably well in much of Northeastern Ontario relative to the Northwest.  In the Northeast, the Timiskaming and Manitoulin regions seem the most depressed while in the Northwest, Rainy River is in particularly poor shape especially relative to the Kenora region.  Nevertheless, the economy of the Northwest has begun to move beyond the forest sector downturn.  Given the improvements in the economy as a result of growing mining activity in the Northwest that have been occurring over the last two years, one thing we can expect in the future in Northwestern Ontario is an uptick in the number of births. Who knows, maybe in Thunder Bay they may actually find they need more schools after the slew they closed over the last decade.