Ministry of Natural Resources job cuts, office closures coming, province says

By Rob Ferguson Toronto Star June 28, 2012

Job cuts and office closures are coming to Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources as it chops $70 million or 10 per cent of its spending over three years, Minister Michael Gravelle confirmed Thursday.

“These are tough decisions,” he acknowledged at a news conference, overshadowing the release of a plan to protect woodland caribou in a huge chunk of wilderness between Timmins and James Bay.

The deal, reached after negotiations with forestry firms and First Nations that signed the 2010 Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, would also allow logging companies to cut down 20 per cent more spruce trees over the next 30 years.

The proposal — which covers an area five times the size of Toronto — would protect 800,000 hectares of caribou habitat while leaving 2.2 million hectares further south open to forestry.

“In the southern zone we haven’t seen caribou for some time,” said Janet Sumner, executive director of the conservation group CPAWS-Wildlands League, which supports the plan.

“It’s going to continue to keep jobs,” added Timmins Mayor Tom Laughren.

Gravelle said the proposal, which still requires government approval, is “balancing what’s best for industry, for northern communities and for the protection of the woodland caribou.”

The caribou is considered a species-at-risk and needs land free of development to roam and breed. Sumner said it’s not known how many caribou are in the area.

Word of the ministry staff cuts leaked out after employees in northern Ontario were warned to brace for changes as part of the minority Liberal government’s effort to slay a $15-billion deficit.

It’s another blow for the north at a time when the minority Liberal government is already under fire from northerners for plans to privatize the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission, saying an annual taxpayer subsidy of $103 million for its train and bus services is no longer affordable.

No final decisions have been made on the number of employees to be laid off or offices that could face closure, but Gravelle, who represents the riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North, pledged “there will continue to be a very strong field presence.” The ministry is often a major player in northern cities and towns, providing jobs and wielding influence in a region hard-hit by years of mill and mine closures.

“We’ll be trying to make the most sensitive decision we can in terms of the impacts on everything on staff, let alone the communities,” Gravelle added.

“We are committed to maintaining our commitment to natural resource management conservation and our core priorities — fish and wildlife, Crown land management, forestry, parks public safety … but we also have to manage with a significant internal deficit.”

The Liberal government has been touting its plans to develop the so-called Ring of Fire, a vast swath of chromite and other mineral deposits in northwestern Ontario to help bring more jobs and prosperity to the region.

In Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s March budget, Gravelle’s ministry falls to $687.1 million in funding for the current fiscal year, down from an interim figure of $713.3 million last year.