Government postpones NewPage aid briefing indefinitely

The provincial government is indefinitely postponing a technical briefing to explain how it will revise its financial aid package for the company planning to buy the former NewPage paper mill.

The Canada Revenue Agency rejected tax proposals from Pacific West Commercial Corp. late last week.

The province has already committed $125 million as part of a package to reopen the mill, which included money to buy land for production and a $40-million repayable loan.

After the rejection the province had said it would forgive some, or all, of the loan.

At the time, the province said it would explain its response on Monday.

Then, the timing changed to "early this week."

Now Premier Darrell Dexter's press secretary said no date has been set to explain how the province's aid for the Vancouver-based company will change.

"We're still not able to say because a lot of those details are still being worked out. It was very quickly that we were trying to respond to this information that came though last week with the CRA ruling. And we were moving as quickly as we could to try to work through those details on how we could restructure and help this deal move forward," said Jennifer Stewart.

Since the mill closed last September, the government has spent $16 million keeping the mill in a hot idle state and $21 million more to keep people working in the woods through the Forestry Infrastructure Fund. That assistance combined with aid package totals more than a $150 million.

The government said Pacific West has promised to spend $160 million during its first year of operation.

The mill's new owner had applied to the Canada Revenue Agency for tax breaks using losses incurred by the mill's previous owners.