Grieg Seafood pausing construction on Marystown expansion project
Project has faced delays before, and Greig says it's still committed to completion
Grieg Seafood Canada says it's putting a pause on completing a large-scale salmon farming facility in the Newfoundland and Labrador community of Marystown.
That decision is largely driven by the inability to find a financing partner and the looming threat of economic tariffs from the United States.
Construction of the 17,500-square-metre post-smolt facility has been delayed before — October 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, Grieg Seafood COO Grant Cumming says the project is on hold altogether.
"There's still quite a lot of work to complete the post-smolt facility. We're, I guess, around about halfway through the job. And we still plan on completing it," Cumming told CBC Radio's The Broadcast on Thursday.
"But with the political uncertainty we're facing just now, and the fact that we haven't yet found a partner to help us with our investment plans in Canada, it means that we are postponing it."
The facility would allow Grieg to expand operations in Placentia Bay, allowing more young salmon to be grown and kept on land for a longer period of time.
Cumming said the company doesn't expect layoffs among the 111 local employees.
Despite immense municipal and provincial support in Newfoundland and Labrador, Cumming said, a commitment to ban open-net pen aquaculture in British Columbia by 2029 and economic threats from U.S. President Donald Trump have shareholders making second guesses.
"That certainly has an impact on our confidence, the confidence of our shareholders, to invest in Canada as a whole," he said. "We were still planning to move forward in Newfoundland, safe in the feeling that we had good local support here. But now the tariffs that are being suggested for the U.S., which is our main market for … Newfoundland, is a threat to us."
Despite the project being on hold, Cumming stressed the decision is just a postponement.
He said Grieg is happy with the success of farming in Marystown, and has recently completed initial environmental work to expand into Bay d'Espoir, Burgeo and Port-aux-Basques.
'We need them here': Marystown mayor
Marystown Mayor Brian Keating told CBC News he was disheartened by Grieg's decision to pause construction, but says the town has to believe them when they say it's only a postponement.
He hopes Grieg will stay committed to the region as a key economic driver.
"It's a very viable part of the Burin Peninsula. We need them here, we want them here and we're trying to do [what we can] as a town and a peninsula to keep them here," Keating said.
"If you don't have the people, you don't have the industry here on the peninsula, then everything else gets affected."
He said the town is willing to work with any partner Greig brought into the post-smolt facility if it brought economic stability.
But, Keating did take exception with Cumming's comment that layoffs shouldn't be expected. He said he knows of people outside of the contracting or construction of the facility who have lost their jobs.
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Winnipeg Free Press
14 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit The Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach, even if that leads to more inmates. The South Dakota State Penitentiary For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600 million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lieutenant Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's laws mean more people are in prison South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.'
Toronto Star
a day ago
- Toronto Star
Bank of Canada head Tiff Macklem says mandate should evolve in a ‘shock-prone' world
OTTAWA — Tiff Macklem is wearing an Edmonton Oilers pin as he reflects on coming very close to beating big odds. It's a significant day for the governor of the Bank of Canada: he's just laid out his reasons to the entire country and a global audience for keeping the central bank's benchmark interest rate steady for a second straight time. That night is also Game 1 of the NHL's Stanley Cup finals; Macklem ends his press conference with a hearty 'Go Oilers!' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW It's a rematch from last year's heartbreak, when the Oilers came oh-so-close to mounting a seemingly impossible four-game comeback against the Florida Panthers, only to fall short by a single goal in Game 7. Macklem, too, was almost safe to declare victory last year. He had just about secured a coveted 'soft landing' for Canada's economy — a rare feat that sees restrictive monetary policy bring down surging levels of inflation without tipping the economy into a prolonged downturn. 'We got inflation down. We didn't cause a recession,' Macklem said in an interview with The Canadian Press after the rate announcement Wednesday. 'And, to be frank, until President (Donald) Trump started threatening the economy with new tariffs, we were actually seeing growth pick up.' Fresh out of one crisis, the central bank now must contend with another in U.S. tariffs. Five years into his tenure as head of the Bank of Canada, Macklem said he sees the central bank's role in stickhandling the economy — as well as Canada's role on the world stage — evolving. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Many Canadians have become more familiar with the Bank of Canada in recent years. After the COVID-19 pandemic recovery ignited inflation, the central bank's rapid tightening cycle and subsequent rate cuts were top-line news for anxious Canadians stressed about rising prices and borrowing costs. That was all in pursuit of meeting the central bank's inflation target of two per cent, part of a mandate from the federal government that's up for review next year. Macklem said the past few years have led the Bank of Canada to scrutinize some of its metrics, like core inflation and how it responds to supply shocks in the economy. But he defends keeping the bank's inflation target, particularly at a time of global upheaval. 'Our flexible inflation targeting framework has just been through the biggest test it's ever had in the 30 years since we announced the inflation target,' he said. 'I'm not going to pretend it's been an easy few years for anybody. But I think the framework has performed well.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Macklem said, however, that he sees room to build out the mandate to address other areas of concern from Canadians, such as housing affordability. Whether it's the high cost of rent or a mortgage, or surging prices for groceries and vehicles, Macklem said the past few years have been eye-opening to Canadians who weren't around the last time inflation hit double digits in the 1980s. 'Unfortunately, a whole new generation of Canadians now know what inflation feels like, and they didn't like it one bit,' he said. Monetary policy itself can't make homes more affordable, he noted — in a nutshell, high interest rates make mortgages more expensive while low rates can push up the price of housing itself because they stoke demand. But Macklem said one of the things he's reflecting on is that inflation can get worse when the economy isn't operating at its potential or when it's facing great disruption. 'There is a role for monetary policy to smooth out some of that adjustment — support the economy while ensuring that inflation is well-controlled.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW He didn't offer suggestions on how the mandate might expand to address housing affordability specifically, but said 'the work is ongoing' and will be settled in meetings with the federal government next year. Right now, he's trying to make sure that the economic impacts from Canada's tariff dispute with the United States don't result in prolonged inflation. The Bank of Canada is not alone in debating how monetary policy ought to respond in what Macklem called a more 'shock-prone' world. The G7 Finance Ministers' Summit in Kananaskis, Alta., last month also featured round tables with the bloc's central bankers. Conversations at the summit were 'candid,' Macklem said, and though the nations issued a joint statement at the close of the event, that doesn't mean they agreed on everything. 'International co-operation, to be honest, has never been easy. It is particularly difficult right now, but that doesn't make it less important. That makes it more important,' he said. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'I do think Canada, as the chair of the G7, has a leadership role to play.' The Bank of Canada is also changing the way it has conversations with Canadians and the kind of data it considers. A day after the June interest rate decision, deputy governor Sharon Kozicki told a Toronto business crowd how the central bank is using data more nimbly, relying heavily on surveys and more granular information to make monetary policy decisions in an uncertain time. These sources offer a faster way to see what's happening on the ground in the economy than traditional statistical models allow. Macklem said the central bank would previously have dismissed most supply shocks as transitory — likely to pass without the need for central bank adjustments, such as rising and falling oil prices. But he said the Bank of Canada needs to be running a more 'nuanced playbook' now to respond to some increasingly common shocks: supply chain disruptions, trade conflicts and extreme weather to name a few. An overheating economy running up against a supply disruption is the kind of inflationary fire Macklem is trying to avoid in this latest crisis. 'The economy does not work well when inflation is high,' he said. 'And the primary role of the Bank of Canada is to ensure that Canadians maintain confidence in price stability. That's all we can do for the Canadian economy. That's what we can do for Canadians. And that's what we're focused on.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Later in the day on Wednesday, the Edmonton Oilers took Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals. The Canadian team was down but roared back to win 4-3 in overtime. It's still early in the Bank of Canada's response to the latest global shock. But with any luck, Macklem's team might also get a leg up with lessons learned the last time they faced big odds. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 7, 2025. Politics Headlines Newsletter Get the latest news and unmatched insights in your inbox every evening Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up Yes, I'd also like to receive customized content suggestions and promotional messages from the Star. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Politics Headlines Newsletter You're signed up! You'll start getting Politics Headlines in your inbox soon. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page.
Vancouver Sun
a day ago
- Vancouver Sun
Bank of Canada head Tiff Macklem says mandate should evolve in a 'shock-prone' world
OTTAWA — Tiff Macklem is wearing an Edmonton Oilers pin as he reflects on coming very close to beating big odds. It's a significant day for the governor of the Bank of Canada. He's just laid out his reasons to the entire country and a global audience for keeping the central bank's benchmark interest rate steady for a second straight time. That night is also Game 1 of the NHL's Stanley Cup finals. Macklem ends his press conference with a hearty 'Go Oilers!' It's a rematch from last year's heartbreak, when the Oilers came oh-so-close to mounting a seemingly impossible four-game comeback against the Florida Panthers, only to fall short by a single goal in Game 7. Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Macklem, too, was almost safe to declare victory last year. He had just about secured a coveted 'soft landing' for Canada's economy — a rare feat that sees restrictive monetary policy bring down surging levels of inflation without tipping the economy into a prolonged downturn. 'We got inflation down. We didn't cause a recession,' Macklem said in an interview with The Canadian Press after the rate announcement Wednesday. 'And, to be frank, until President (Donald) Trump started threatening the economy with new tariffs, we were actually seeing growth pick up.' Fresh out of one crisis, the central bank now must contend with another in U.S. tariffs. Five years into his tenure as head of the Bank of Canada, Macklem said he sees the central bank's role in stickhandling the economy — as well as Canada's role on the world stage — evolving. Many Canadians have become more familiar with the Bank of Canada in recent years. After the COVID-19 pandemic recovery ignited inflation, the central bank's rapid tightening cycle and subsequent rate cuts were top-line news for anxious Canadians stressed about rising prices and borrowing costs. That was all in pursuit of meeting the central bank's inflation target of two per cent, part of a mandate from the federal government that's up for review next year. Macklem said the past few years have led the Bank of Canada to scrutinize some of its metrics, like core inflation and how it responds to supply shocks in the economy. But he defends keeping the bank's inflation target, particularly at a time of global upheaval. 'Our flexible inflation targeting framework has just been through the biggest test it's ever had in the 30 years since we announced the inflation target,' he said. 'I'm not going to pretend it's been an easy few years for anybody. But I think the framework has performed well.' Macklem said, however, that he sees room to build out the mandate to address other areas of concern from Canadians, such as housing affordability. Whether it's the high cost of rent or a mortgage, or surging prices for groceries and vehicles, Macklem said the past few years have been eye-opening to Canadians who weren't around the last time inflation hit double digits in the 1980s. 'Unfortunately, a whole new generation of Canadians now know what inflation feels like, and they didn't like it one bit,' he said. Monetary policy itself can't make homes more affordable, he noted — in a nutshell, high interest rates make mortgages more expensive while low rates can push up the price of housing itself because they stoke demand. But Macklem said one of the things he's reflecting on is that inflation can get worse when the economy isn't operating at its potential or when it's facing great disruption. 'There is a role for monetary policy to smooth out some of that adjustment — support the economy while ensuring that inflation is well-controlled.' He didn't offer suggestions on how the mandate might expand to address housing affordability specifically, but said 'the work is ongoing' and will be settled in meetings with the federal government next year. Right now, he's trying to make sure that the economic impacts from Canada's tariff dispute with the United States don't result in prolonged inflation. The Bank of Canada is not alone in debating how monetary policy ought to respond in what Macklem called a more 'shock-prone' world. The G7 Finance Ministers' Summit in Kananaskis, Alta., last month also featured roundtables with the bloc's central bankers. Conversations at the summit were 'candid,' Macklem said, and though the nations issued a joint statement at the close of the event, that doesn't mean they agreed on everything. 'International co-operation, to be honest, has never been easy. It is particularly difficult right now, but that doesn't make it less important. That makes it more important,' he said. 'I do think Canada, as the chair of the G7, has a leadership role to play.' The Bank of Canada is also changing the way it has conversations with Canadians and the kind of data it considers. A day after the June interest rate decision, deputy governor Sharon Kozicki told a Toronto business crowd how the central bank is using data more nimbly, relying heavily on surveys and more granular information to make monetary policy decisions in an uncertain time. These sources offer a faster way to see what's happening on the ground in the economy than traditional statistical models allow. Macklem said the central bank would previously have dismissed most supply shocks as transitory — likely to pass without the need for central bank adjustments, such as rising and falling oil prices. But he said the Bank of Canada needs to be running a more 'nuanced playbook' now to respond to some increasingly common shocks: supply chain disruptions, trade conflicts and extreme weather to name a few. An overheating economy running up against a supply disruption is the kind of inflationary fire Macklem is trying to avoid in this latest crisis. 'The economy does not work well when inflation is high,' he said. 'And the primary role of the Bank of Canada is to ensure that Canadians maintain confidence in price stability. That's all we can do for the Canadian economy. That's what we can do for Canadians. And that's what we're focused on.' Later in the day on Wednesday, the Edmonton Oilers took Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals. The Canadian team was down but roared back to win 4-3 in overtime. It's still early in the Bank of Canada's response to the latest global shock. But with any luck, Macklem's team might also get a leg up with lessons learned the last time they faced big odds. 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