"This is the final straw": Scott Lunny on the death of Vancouver Island’s last big sawmill – and what Alberta should be terrified of next
350 families in Port McNeill just got the pink slip. The same forces are already circling Alberta’s forestry towns.
PORT McNEILL, BC – When United Steelworkers rep Scott Lunny walked into the Cedarvale Lumber mill last week to break the news, grown men cried. Teal-Jones is shutting the doors for good. 350 direct jobs gone before Christmas, another 400-500 ripple losses in trucking, equipment, and local shops. “This is the final straw,” Lunny told me. “We’ve been bleeding for eight years straight. Now the patient is flatlining.”
The official reasons read like a greatest-hits of pain: 45% U.S. tariffs, fibre that literally burned up in wildfires, and old-growth deferrals that locked away the last economic stands. Sound familiar, Alberta? Because the same triple punch is already landing east of the Rockies.
The Same Storm Heading East – Concise Comparison
| Threat | BC Right Now | Alberta Next 2-5 Years |
|---|---|---|
| Fibre supply collapse | Harvests down 60% since 2007 – beetle kill + fires + deferrals | Pine beetle still active in northwest AB; 2023-24 fires torched 2M hectares of timber |
| U.S. tariffs | 45% duties crushing margins | Alberta ships 70% of lumber south – same target on the darts |
| Policy chokeholds | Old-growth deferrals cut AAC 30-40% | Caribou recovery plans threaten 20-30% of northwest tenure |
| Mill closures 2024-25 | 8 permanent shutdowns (3,200 jobs) | West Fraser already idling High Prairie & Hinton lines in 2026 |
“People think Alberta’s safe because we still have trees,” Lunny warned. “But the economics don’t care about provincial borders. When the fibre math stops working and the Americans keep the tariffs, the lights go out – fast.”
Port McNeill is tonight’s ghost town in waiting. Grande Prairie, Slave Lake, and High Level could be tomorrow’s.
One question for every reader in a forestry town: If your mill got the same phone call tomorrow, would your province actually have a Plan B?
Scott Lunny has been fighting for BC resource workers for 22 years. He says he’s never seen it this bleak – and he’s begging Alberta to start paying attention before the sawdust stops flying there too.
