Unfortunately, when governments try to direct investment, even when it is very well-meaning and very well thought out, it very rarely works.
So we would prefer, and this is a unanimous view from our membership, that no subsidies, no direct grants be given to any companies or to keep any mills operating.
But there is a way of keeping the mills open, and that is by encouraging investments in them. If, for example, the CCA were extended to a five-year window, the rapid write-off, or the SR&ED credits became refundable, then when, and only when, companies make the decision to invest in Canada, they will be rewarded for that. The decision of which mill to invest in will be made on the basis of the marketplace, not on the basis of the give and play of government policy and politics.
If giving money to individual mills would work, we might be interested, but the truth of the matter is that part of why we're in the difficulty we are in is because provincial governments tried to dictate industry structure and ended up driving us to a very inefficient position, and because the federal mergers policy, the Competition Bureau, has put a chill on mergers and driven us to an inefficient position.
So yes, you can influence whether jobs are kept in Canada. You can influence whether there are more investments in northern Ontario, not by targeting support, but by making support conditional on an investment in Canadian mills, but not saying which mills. Making support conditional on investment is best achieved through the CCA, which costs nothing, unless someone actually invests, or through making the SR&ED refundable, which in effect costs nothing unless we invest in innovation, and is just a question of accelerating the refund.