Letter to the Editor

Northern Ontario Is Withering — But It Doesn’t Have To

The Ignace sawmill is set to shut down on March 12, 2026. Dozens of skilled workers will lose their jobs. Another northern town will be pushed to the brink.
This comes only months after the Ear Falls sawmill went dark, laying off more than a hundred people. These aren’t random misfortunes. They’re symptoms of a broken model—one that treats Northern Ontario not as a place to build a future, but as a pit to extract from and abandon.
For decades, politicians have chained our economy to boom‑and‑bust cycles. When markets are high, the North delivers: our people work hard, our forests supply the raw materials, and our communities uphold the values of grit, responsibility, and self‑reliance. But when markets dip—even slightly—corporate leaders and far‑off shareholders shield their bottom lines and leave northern families to pay the price.
Take Interfor: after shutting down the Ear Falls mill, its stock price went up 26%. Workers lost paycheques. Families lost stability. But investors cashed in.
That’s not how a healthy economy works. And it’s not how a proud country treats the people who keep it running.
Across Northern Ontario, the shockwaves are hitting everyone: loggers, truckers, millwrights, mechanics, fuel suppliers, small‑business owners, and the local restaurants that rely on paycheques circulating through the community. The people who uphold their end of the bargain—who show up, who do the work, who contribute—are the ones left holding the bag.
But none of this is the fault of working people.
Northern Ontario has always done its part. We’ve provided the timber that built homes and cities. We’ve kept industries alive through hard work and resilience. Yet time and again, decisions made in boardrooms thousands of kilometres away have stripped prosperity from the very communities that produce the wealth.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Canada needs lumber. It needs steady jobs. It needs the people who know how to work the land and manage our resources responsibly. You can’t build housing without lumber. You can’t build an economy without the workers who create real value.
So why are mills sitting idle while families struggle? The North doesn’t lack talent or resources. What it lacks is a political commitment to long‑term planning, local investment, and policies that keep wealth where it’s created instead of letting it flow out of the region.
The closures in Ignace and Ear Falls should serve as a wake‑up call. Not just about what we’re losing, but what we could gain if we insisted on an economy that puts community stability before shareholder profit. If the people doing the work had a real voice in how their industries operate. If local prosperity wasn’t an afterthought but the foundation.
Northern Ontario isn’t dying. It’s being drained. The profits leave; the problems stay behind.
But with the right choices—prioritizing local control, reinvesting in the communities that produce Canada’s wealth, and ensuring workers are partners rather than expendable line items—we can build an economy that’s stable, grounded, and fair. We can build the North.
Luke Hildebrand
Northern Co-Chair
President Kenora—Rainy River Ontario New Democratic Party
Co-President Kenora—Kiiwetinoong New Democratic Party