Opposition MPs are expressing concern that after shopping for up two main Canadian firms, the overseas proprietor of certainly one of Canada’s greatest forestry companies is now additionally formally taking up an Indonesian-Chinese language pulp and paper conglomerate from his household — an organization he has lengthy denied working in tandem with.
A half-page discover quietly printed by the European Union on Monday states that Jackson Wijaya, proprietor of Paper Excellence, is buying “sole management” of Asia Pulp & Paper from his father.
The controversial conglomerate has a report of forest destruction in Indonesia and has been a goal of Indonesian and world environmental teams.
After it acquired Canadian pulp and paper firms Domtar in 2021 and Resolute Forest Merchandise in 2023 — all with the federal authorities’s blessing — Paper Excellence grew to become the most important personal supervisor of forests in Canada, controlling 22 million hectares, an space 4 occasions the dimensions of Nova Scotia.
The corporate has repeatedly acknowledged — together with in testimony earlier than Parliament final yr — that whereas Jackson Wijaya received some help from his household within the early years of Paper Excellence, which he based in 2007, the Canadian and overseas entities have operated utterly independently for years.
“We received utterly performed for suckers by a really doubtful firm,” Charlie Angus, the NDP critic for pure assets, stated in response to this week’s announcement.
“I do not assume the Canadian authorities would have ever allowed Asia Pulp & Paper [to buy Domtar and Resolute] due to its doubtful report. So the household units up one other firm. The household says, ‘Oh, we’re not related in any manner.’ Regardless of the apparent connections, they get.… to purchase Canadian assets. So we’re able that was fully predictable,” Angus stated.
Spokespeople for Paper Excellence, which final month introduced it was going to undertake the Domtar title for its enterprise, didn’t instantly reply to emailed questions from CBC Information on Wednesday afternoon.
‘Deeply regarding’
Conservative pure assets critic Shannon Stubbs stated the information “is deeply regarding for Canadian employees and communities” amid mounting job losses and mill closures within the nation’s forestry sector.
“The Liberals should reply to Canadians and be clear since claims have been made that the acquisition of mills in Canada had no connection to Asia Pulp & Paper,” she stated in an announcement.
Audrey Champoux, spokeswoman for Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, stated there’s little the federal government can do now below the Funding Canada Act, which permits the federal cupboard to probably block overseas investments in Canada on financial and nationwide safety grounds.
The act “applies to investments in Canada by non-Canadians,” Champoux stated. “Asia Pulp & Paper is a company group that’s headquartered in Indonesia and China and is a separate authorized entity from Paper Excellence. As such, the change in possession of Asia Pulp just isn’t topic to the Funding Canada Act.”
Since 2010, Paper Excellence has obtained a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in federal and provincial loans and subsidies, promising revitalization and jobs in some economically hard-hit communities. But it surely in the end closed quite a few mills — together with in Powell River and Mackenzie, B.C. Espanola, Ont., and Pictou, N.S. The corporate presently owns greater than 30 mills in Canada, america, Brazil and France.
A joint investigation by CBC and varied Canadian and world media shops final yr discovered intensive proof that as just lately as 2020, Paper Excellence collaborated with Asia Pulp & Paper on market analysis, enterprise technique and authorized filings, and even sought instructions on pricing and gross sales volumes.
‘Very opaque’
Priyanka Vittal, a lawyer for Greenpeace Canada, stated the environmental group is apprehensive concerning the vanishing boundaries between Paper Excellence and its overseas cousin partly as a result of it is a privately held firm, with little monetary transparency, that controls an enormous a part of a significant nationwide useful resource.
“It has been very opaque, and the priority is what which means by way of their operations in Canadian forests and accountability,” Vittal stated.
Jayme Albert, a spokesperson for Canada’s Competitors Bureau, famous that in the course of the bureau’s assessment of Paper Excellence’s takeover of Domtar, it thought-about whether or not there was a powerful widespread curiosity between Paper Excellence and Asia Pulp & Paper.
The bureau decided that even when there was, it would not “considerably reduce” competitors, that means it will doubtless have accepted the takeover regardless.
