Sussex Mayor: Mine Closure A Shock
SUSSEX–It was a call Sussex Mayor Marc Thorne hoped he would never receive. At 7:30 this morning he picked up the phone to field a call from representatives of PotashCorp in Saskatchewan. The Picadilly mine, the heart of the Sussex area’s economy, would be closing immediately. About 430 people would lose well-paying jobs.
It was a shock says Mayor Thorne. “There was no advance warning at all,” he told Huddle.
“We knew that the Picadilly mine was undergoing some growing pains and that the schedule wasn’t exactly where the mine hoped it would be, but we certainly didn’t expect to hear the news this morning.”
Thorne acknowledges that the closure of the mine is a devastating blow to his community. “It’s going to have a tremendous impact on our economy. Potash mining in our area has been the pinnacle of our industrial centre, employing about 500 people with well paying jobs,” he said.
“It’s not just those folks that are going to be so terribly effected, it’s going to be the businesses that supply the mine or benefit from the disposable income from the miners themselves.”
Replacing those jobs in the current economic climate won’t be easy admits Thorne. “There’s not a lot of obvious opportunity available,” he notes.
‘It’s not going to be pleasant, and it’s not going to be easy, we’re dealing with a stagnant New Brunswick economy right now but we will survive and we’ll get through this.”
Thorne says that this isn’t a decision PotashCorp, which invested heavily in its New Brunswick operations, wanted to make. “I want people to know that PotashCorp has been a tremendous corporate citizen. We will miss their presence.”