Fort William First Nation, Resolute Forest Products Sawmill

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The Fort William First Nation's desire to enhance economic opportunities for its members and with the know-how to engage in positive relationships has brought many positive benefits.

Peter Collins: We have a strong economy in our community of many, many things that we've developed over the years, as we look to the future and create a positive future for our community members.

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Peter Collins
Chief, Fort William First Nation

Peter Collins: It's always exciting too, to being a part of development in our community and our territories, and we have big plans for our communities in the days to come. What happened, back in 1999, Resolute, or Bowater at the time, announced a major stud mill that was going to be developed within the northwestern Ontario region. Then there were 3 selected sites. Fort William was number 3 on that site and we brought them into council and we asked, what would it take to become number 1 on that site. And we come up with an idea that we built the building, developed the land and rented it back to Resolute and that got us to the forefront of being selected.

What does it mean for our community is economic development, job creation and all of the spin offs that go along with it.

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However, the decisions hinged on finding a solution to removing the regulatory uncertainty created by the absence of appropriate laws, applicable on reserve, to govern a major industrial complex of this size.

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The Fort William First Nation Sawmill Regulations, made under the First Nations Commercial and Industrial Development Act, also known as FNCIDA, provided Fort William First Nation with an option to reach a solution.

Peter Collins: The creation of FNCIDA was really helpful in getting it to the goal line, and helped assure them that that seamless transition would be easy to make happen, and we made it happen.

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Making the regulations created in tandem with the addition of the land to reserve enabled the sawmill to continue its day-to-day operations without interruption.

Michael Martel: FNCIDA was instrumental in the development of this operation. Thunder Bay sawmill is a flagship operation for Resolute Forest Products.

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Michael Martel
VP, Forest Products Operations, Resolute Forest Products

Michael Martel: Like operating in any other jurisdiction, there are rulesets that are expected to be abided by, which we fully endorse. The framework by which First Nations can participate in a venture of this size, a multi-multimillion dollar operation has been facilitated by FNCIDA and I think it would have been very difficult to do so without that framework.

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Randall Nahkala
Head Saw Filer, Resolute Forest Products

Randall Nahkala: The transition went really smooth.

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It works by incorporating applicable provincial laws by reference into federal regulations. This ensures the necessary measures are in place for worker health and safety, and environmental protection.

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A Canada-Ontario-Fort William First Nation cooperation agreement supports the administration and enforcement of the sawmill operations.

Peter Collins: We say we're stewards of the land and we got to make sure we protect them the right way, and the environment is our main priority and how we protect that. At the same time, I said, we did it to improve the legacy of our community and the economy of our community.

Michael Martel: At this operation, around 235 employees. This is one of the largest sawmills in Eastern Canada. We produce about 300 million board feet. Every week, we ship somewhere around 50 railcars of lumber out of this operation.

In addition to that, we also have built a pellet mill, which came about 5 years ago. That was in addition to our operation, which allows us to capture some of the by-products/ The sawdust, that is produced and processed, which we make pellets and 45,000 tonnes which are sold to Ontario Power Generation, for a generating station that was converted from coal to bioenergy.

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Fort William First Nation's success, with regulations put in place in 2011, and continued partnership with Resolute Forest Products are providing ongoing positive impacts to its members and the surrounding communities.

Michael Martel: When Resolute looks at its relationship with First Nations, in particular with Fort William First Nation, we look at the whole supply chain.

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Michael Martel
VP, Forest Products Operations, Resolute Forest Products

Michael Martel: When I mean the supply chain is that, making wood products in a facility like this is only 1 phase. There's the whole phase of the forest planning that has to happen, the harvest, extraction, transport of the trees to this facility. We use 100% of the tree that comes here: the bark is burnt to make energy, to provide heat, the sawdust is turned into pellets, the planer shavings, are again, turned into energy. Of course, the lumber is sold to customers all across North America.

The supply chain, taking the product, all the planning, the regulatory work that has to go into bringing the trees to the facility and then shipping the lumber from here involves many, many, many millions of dollars and many different businesses, and folks are involved in it. There's about 2,300 people directly involved in our supply chain, and we get take great pride in sharing economic development with the First Nations people at Fort William and elsewhere. There's about $100 million of contracts that were signed some years ago, and every year there's about $60 million worth of business that we do with various First Nation communities, in particular with Fort William First Nation.

In addition to that labour, human resources is critical to our operation. The 2,300 people that work here, many of them are First Nations from the local communities, in particular Fort William, at this site, as well as our other sites in Northwestern Ontario. So, it touches on many First Nations from Northwestern Ontario. Of course, Fort William First Nation is ideally positioned adjacent to Thunder Bay to capitalize on the business opportunities around this operation in Thunder Bay on Fort William First Nation.

But, there are many communities outside, that where trees come from and those individuals may not want to leave their homeland. They're more interested in working closer to the communities. So the types of work they get involved in would be the harvesting, the tree planting, the transportation, so they can come home every night.

Right now, we're putting on a trucking program where we're training individuals to learn how to drive logging trucks and chip trucks. We've also sponsored and coordinated training for people to get into trades, working with the local colleges and organizations like Anishinabek Employment and Training Services, to put people into school so that they can have careers in the forest products industry.

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The Fort William First Nation has brought economic growth and opportunities to the community.

Peter Collins: There's just over 100 plus First Nation members, not just Fort William members, but for Northwestern Ontario. When you look at the whole Northwestern Ontario and the communities that are surrounding our community here, a lot of them have the opportunity to work there.

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Peter Collins
Chief, Fort William First Nation

Our members right now, somewhere in the neighbourhood of around 20 that are working in the facility.

Ginger Randle: I'm a member of Fort William First Nation and I live on Fort William First Nation.

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Ginger Randle
Human Resource Assistant, Resolute Forest Products

Ginger Randle: I worked at Fort William First Nation. I was the Employment and Training Coordinator. So I did that for a few years and before that I worked at Fort William in the Ontario Works Department.

Some of the programs that we have for trades are the Millwright Program, which is ongoing. We work in partnership with the Confederation College and in the summertime the students have an apprenticeship, this being one of the sites.

We make it a priority to work with local, local businesses and to utilize their skills and ability.

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Randall Nahkala
Head Saw Filer, Resolute Forest Products

Randall Nahkala: I found that Resolute is really involved the Fort William First Nations in a lot of different capacities, whenever we've had different openings or anything like that. Fort William First Nations has been pretty well represented here and it's just been a great experience.

I'm in maintenance. We take care of all the saws, all the knives and we sharpen them and maintain the equipment that they go into so that we can make a good product.
It's nice to have a job right on the community here that we can…makes everybody proud.

Peter Collins: It was a great stepping stone for us. If you look at the partnership that we have with Resolute today, I mean, it's a very exciting partnership. I mean we have a great relationship with their senior staff in their organization.

We want to utilize them as a stepping stone for international companies that may want to come to Fort William. We have water, we have deep water ports, we have rail. We have everything that needs to develop our land.

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