Mayor Greg Dionne speaks at an event in September, 2020. (Alison Sandstrom/paNOW Staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

Timber supply issues

Dionne says promised P.A. forestry manufacturing facility still waiting for provincial approval

Apr 20, 2021 | 8:41 AM

Six months after he announced a massive forestry manufacturing facility was “ready to build” in Prince Albert, Mayor Greg Dionne says the project is still waiting for provincial approval.

“The City of P.A. and the developer, we’re all on side,” Dionne told paNOW. “What we’re doing is we’re 100 per cent waiting for the province.”

Dionne announced the facility, which he said could employee upwards of 750 people, during the fall municipal election campaign. At the time he told paNOW there was just one final condition that needed to be complied with to make the project a reality and he expected it be completed imminently – as early as the beginning of November.

Half a year later, Dionne said the facility continues to be his ‘number one priority’ but the province is still working out issues with the timber supply for the potential facility.

“I do believe it’s going to happen,” Dionne said. “I just believe the province got themselves in a situation that they didn’t have the [wood] allotment to give out and so they’re trying to figure out how to appease everyone until they get control of the forestry management agreements.”

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Dionne said he’s in regular contact with his provincial counterparts on the project. As for a new potential timeline for its approval, Dionne told them, “that was yesterday.

“We are moving forward and I’d like it sooner than later,” he said. “I would like it in the next month.”

Asked if he had announced the facility prematurely to bolster his election campaign last fall Dionne said “absolutely not.

“This is for real, they are for real,” he said, adding the company behind the proposed facility, whose name has not been released, is locally-based.

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom