I have read the proposal for…

I have read the proposal for this new sawmill to be built in Bonfield, Ontario.

I worked for 17 years in and around the Mattawa/Temiscaming/Huntsville/Alban area for Tembec in the forestry department, I left Tembec in 2012.

Looking at this proposal, I fail to see how it can ever source 400,000 m3 of sawmill quality material (commonly called sawlog).

The proposal calls for 400,000 of this material to be sourced from the NIpissing Forest, Algonquin Forest, Temagami forest and some from private land.

in my estimation, with the low quality of the wood currently in those forest and the mixed nature of our stands of forest, a harvest of over 1,000,000 m3 of wood would be required to even have a chance to produce the 400,000 m3 for the sawmill.

The Ministry should do an extensive review of the feasibility of harvesting so much volume economically. The local forest licensee already harvest what is economically possible in those districts, which probably amounts to 50% of the available wood.

The remaining 50% is the less economical to source for reasons of access, low density and yield per hectares, high amount of undesirable species and high proportion of low quality. None of those issues are helped by the construction of this new sawmill in Bonfield.

There is also a need for a processing facility that can use the undesired species and the low quality which will be a minimum of 600,000 m3 per year, probably more.

This proposal is not realistic in any way.

Talk to the current harvesters of the forest in the region about their cost, take the time to understand it, and you will see that the extra volume needed for this new mill is cost prohibitive. Every extra m3 harvested on top of what is harvested today will be exponentially costly.

In this situation, for the Ministry to provide a mill license and some public funds for this project is just a plain bad decision.