STEPHEN RICCIO
PONTIAC Dec. 9, 2020
The likelihood that the Fibre Pontiac project’s ideal partner, Renmatix, will officially name the Pontiac as its future home by the end of 2020 is low, according to Pierre Vézina, MRC Pontiac forestry consultant and the president of Fibre Pontiac.
The American company’s commitment is the thread on which Vézina’s consultant contract hangs, as the MRC council passed a resolution at their Nov. 25 meeting that required two conditions be met by the end of 2020 for him to continue to be paid next year. Those conditions are that the federal Investment in Forestry Industry Transformation (IFIT) funding that Renmatix applied for be approved, and that the company then declares interest in the region.
Were the project to be fully realized, the company would build a . . .
$100 million bio-refinery and would be the main component of a project that would call the Pontiac Regional Industrial Park in Litchfield home. It has received support from the Quebec Ministry of Economy and Innovation, Wakefield Group: the owner of the industrial park, and two other companies that would complement the bio-refinery, Forespect and Abri-Tech.
While Renmatix is considering the former Smurfit Stone site as one possible location, others in Maine and New York are also on its radar. Vézina said that the last remaining hurdle for the company is hearing back regarding federal funding, as Renmatix views the Pontiac as an opportune location.
“I don’t think [Maine and New York] can produce electricity at the price that we can produce it,” he said during a phone interview. “And if they invest here, it’s American investment. The costs of all the production is going to be in Canadian dollars and they sell in American dollars so it’s very interesting for them to invest in Canada.”
Vézina explained that Renmatix composed a letter seeking IFIT funding that expressed an interest to begin in January 2021, but they first must know how much the federal government is willing to invest. Due to the pandemic, he said that the funding verdict is being pushed to early 2021. He said that the resolution imposes a timeline on the project that is not patient enough.
“I think some people [do] not have enough patience to follow out the project,” he said. “I think we are on a good trail and the COVID didn’t help [to speed up] this project.”
Vezina said that if the project were implemented, it would bring 30-35 jobs alone through Renmatix, and possibly 125-150 overall across the various companies that would operate in a complimentary fashion with the bio-refinery.
MRC Pontiac Warden Jane Toller said that the resolution was brought to the council because she believed that Vézina’s employment with the MRC, which stretches back to 2013, needed oversight. While it does require the conditions be met by the end of 2020, she said that were Renmatix to get approved for funding and were to declare interest early in 2021, the MRC would still consider re-signing his contract.
“The [2020] contract was signed in January, I think even at the end of January,” Toller explained. “If they meet the conditions later, we will not automatically resign but we will go back and discuss the terms of potentially another contract.”
She also said that she had heard from a reliable source at the federal government that the project’s funding would in fact be determined by the end of the year.
She gave credit to Fibre Pontiac for the amount of research that had been done by the National Research Council and for the concept that had been developed. However, she said she felt that the project lacked transparency and did not provide enough information to all of the mayors that requested it.
“There has been lots of criticism in the past of how the MRC was operating and as long as I am here, I am going to do two things: I’m going to make sure there’s no conflict of interest, that there’s open communication and transparency to the people of the Pontiac, and I’m also going to make sure that we never have another company arrive here making big promises with their hand out and delivering nothing,” she said.
Toller said that at the end of the day, Vézina’s contract is paid by the taxpayers, whether it be through government grants or from municipal shares. She added that although the resolution was raised by Otter Lake Mayor Kim Cartier-Villeneuve, it was her idea to impose the two conditions. As warden, Toller is unable to put forth her own resolutions at council meetings.
Michel Léonard and Claude Gravelle are the director general and the board of directors president, respectively, of the Pontiac Forest Producers Board, and they both in favour of a Renmatix-led mill. While currently a question mark, they said it would be a boon to the Pontiac, especially given that the large amounts of pulp that the bio-refinery would need are in abundance throughout the region.
“It’s very important for this mill to open up in the Pontiac,” Gravelle said. “It would really bring the economy up in the Pontiac … It’s going to be to the advantage of wood producers in the Pontiac.”
He said that any local mill would immediately benefit forestry producers who have had to pay a lot more for trucking logs to facilities outside of the Pontiac.
Léonard said that since the closure of the Smurfit Stone mill in 2008, the volume of logs sold has consistently been under 20 per cent of the allowed 580,000 cubic metres per year.
While neither Léonard or Gravelle are privy to the decision making of Renmatix, they will be meeting with members of the MRC Pontiac council on Dec. 10 to express their optimism about the Fibre Pontiac project and to make it clear that it would be compatible with a possible Energie Davidson mill.
“We have to explain to some mayors … there’s a lot of [pulpwood] for both mills and there’s no reason why the mayors are not pushing both projects,” Léonard said.
He and Gravelle both said they were more optimistic about the bio-refinery in Litchfield than a potential Energie Davidson mill, as they had concerns about the latter’s ability to get access to pine and hardwood logs from crown land.
Toller dismissed this notion, explaining that if the mill did have a need for more logs, they could simply take them from Ontario, the U.S. or private land.
While the forestry board has managed to continue to serve Pontiac forestry producers since the Smurfit Stone closure, it has gone from five employees to just Léonard and his secretary over the past several years.
Léonard said that successful mill projects are necessary in order to keep the services of the board in the Pontiac.
