UPM exporting wood, union official charges

Workers at two UPM mills in Miramichi facing a temporary shut downsay wood is leaving New Brunswick, but a company official denies logs from Crown lands are being exported.

The company, based in Helsinki, Finland,is cutting as much wood as ever, even though it closed its craft mill and is now planningto shutdown two other Miramichi mills, charged Chris Allison, an official with Local 689 of the Communications, Energy & Paperworkers Union of Canada.

"We believe that they are selling it to other mills across this country —Quebec, Newfoundland, even Nova Scotia —and they're making profit off it, while our people are sitting here doing nothing," Allison said.

"They're filling their pockets and they're taking all the trees off the land and there's not going to be anything left here."

Paul Orser, director of woodlands for UPM Miramichi, said the company is not exporting wood to Finland from Crown land right now, though it is exporting logs cut on private wood lots.

He said the company might apply for an export permit for Crown wood soon, but only if no local markets can be found for certain types of wood.

"There is some birch and some poplar that there is no New Brunswick market identified yet, and that's what we would put in front of the minister [Minister of Natural Resources Donald Arsenault] —some permissions to move that."

Arsenault isn't saying how he'll handle a request by the company to export timber. He said his preference is to have the wood stay in New Brunswick, but Orser said that may not be possible.