With prices set to jump, J.D. Irving Limited, Twin Rivers Paper and other firms that use lots of electricity don’t plan to put up a fight this time

by John Chilibeck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter. Source: Telegraph-Journal.
December 29, 2025

J.D. Irving Limited, the large private firm that uses a huge amount of electricity to power its mills and other business operations, is not registered as an intervenor to try to stymie the public utility’s latest request for a big rate increase.

In fact, none of NB Power’s large industrial customers have applied to be intervenors before the regulator, the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board (EUB), which will decide if the price should go up.

Not Twin Rivers Paper, not Irving Oil, none of them.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen this, and I’ve been with the organization for 20 years,” David Young, the executive director of regulatory affairs with the EUB, told Brunswick News.

NB Power is applying for a rate increase of 4.5 per cent for all its 400,000 customers – residential and business – to take effect April 1.

It has to apply to the EUB because the law says so. As a monopoly provider of electricity in the province, NB Power must prove to the regulator it isn’t charging households and businesses too much.

The latest demand is on top of approved rate hikes of 23 per cent over the last three years.

JDI layoffs

JDI has argued those increases were extraordinary and made businesses far less competitive on the world market.

In February, in response to the big jump in the price for electricity, the family company laid off 140 workers at its plant in East Saint John, nearly half its workforce that made paper products.

The plant on Bayside Drive used to consume the most electricity of any factory in New Brunswick. As recently as 2021, the company said it was spending more than $70 million a year on electricity across all of its operations.

And yet, it is not intervening at the EUB hearings in March.

“At this point our position on rates is well established in the public record, and given the frequency of hearings, we didn’t see the need to formally intervene this round,” Anne McInerney, a JDI spokeswoman, told Brunswick News.

U.S. tariffs

Twin Rivers Paper which runs a pulp mill in Edmundston, has consistently appeared at rate hearings and argued the increases NB Power sought were excessive.

It did not respond to a request for comment.

However, Forest NB, the industry association that represents many of the big electrical consumers in the province, including Twin Rivers, AV Group, and Groupe Savoie, said the rates were the least of the industry’s concerns right now.

“Nobody likes to see higher power rates, but the reality is New Brunswick has the fourth lowest rates in Canada and although it is challenging for residents and definitely challenging for industry, because our nearest competitor, Quebec, has lower rates than we do,” said Kim Allen, the industry association’s executive director, in an interview.

“Electricity is expensive. And we are in a situation in New Brunswick with aging infrastructure that needs attention.”

Allen said NB Power’s rate increases were catching up with inflation over the last 10 years.

“The question should be how did NB Power get into this difficult position in the first place?”

Allen said her industry had much bigger concerns – namely the punishing tariffs the United States have imposed on wood products imported from New Brunswick.

More than 80 per cent of the industry’s products cross the border, in a sector that employs 24,000 New Brunswickers, many in small towns where it is the biggest economic player, paying $1.4 billion in annual employment income.

Four intervenors

Despite that economic importance, there are only four registered intervenors for the EUB hearings that will take place at the Fredericton Convention Centre from March 9 to 20.

They include the public intervenor (an appointee of the provincial government), the municipal group (representing the three municipal utilities that buy power in bulk from NB Power), the Human Development Council (a nonprofit anti-poverty organization in Saint John) and the New Brunswick Coalition of Persons with Disabilities (a grassroots organization fighting for people with medical needs, such as electric beds).

In the past, JDI hired a top Toronto law firm and other lawyers from New Brunswick to argue its position before the board. For hours, lawyers retained by JDI would pick apart the evidence provided by NB Power and interrogate its top executives, probing for shortcomings.

They would also deliver final arguments to the board, testimony that would frequently convince the quasi-judicial panel not to give NB Power exactly what it had wanted, even if it were to just shave its rate request by less than a percentage point.

Better way to save?

The lack of interest in the latest round of hearings raises questions as to whether big industry has come up with a better way to save on electrical costs.

Top JDI executives have publicly mused that with the stroke of a pen, the provincial government could end the big battle over power rates by reforming the Electricity Act.

In September, two of the firm’s vice presidents, Mark Mosher and Andy Carson, told an all-party legislative committee they wanted the Liberal government to give industry the right to produce its own power, at its own cost, and use NB Power’s transmission lines, without paying exorbitant rates.

This would be like the changes Nova Scotia has made. New Brunswick’s neighbour recently announced a “green choice program” open to 11 large-scale electricity customers that will benefit from new wind projects at a cut rate.

As part of the deal, the customers – including Walmart, Michelin, and most of Nova Scotia’s hospitals – must pay to use transmission lines.

Builders of four of the six wind projects recently bailed on the program, citing cost uncertainty and other problems.

The Nova Scotia government insists it will go ahead with a new round of requests for proposals. The wind energy is supposed to be ready by 2028.

Open letter to Holt

Industry supporters say the same kind of reform should happen in New Brunswick.

Unifor, the big trade union that represents the laid off workers at JDI, wrote an open letter to Premier Susan Holt on Dec. 17 asking her government to follow Nova Scotia’s example.

The union has 8,000 members in New Brunswick who work in a variety of industries, including AV Group and Twin Rivers Paper.

“We’re in a crisis here in New Brunswick,” said Jennifer Murray, Unifor’s Atlantic regional director. “We need big bold solutions right now to continue the sustainability of these industries and our members’ jobs.”

Murray said Unifor’s 200 members who work at Port Hawkesbury Paper in Nova Scotia would soon benefit from the stable price of wind energy.

JDI, meanwhile, is getting ready to build a big windfarm on land it owns at Brighton Mountain near Juniper, more than 200 kilometres northwest of its headquarters in Saint John.

It plans to put up 38 turbines that can create 200 megawatts of energy, about one-third the output of the province’s only nuclear plant at Point Lepreau.

So far, the timber has been cleared, and roads have been put in. Neighbours from the sparsely populated area recently stopped the company from blasting rock out of the way, but the firm insists it will complete the entire job by 2027.

JDI plans on adding several more of the tall, spinning devices, creating another 150 megawatts of electricity, at a future date.

Power purchase agreement

On Dec. 19, NB Power announced a power purchase agreement with JDI to buy its wind energy. Very few details of the private deal were released, but the public utility said there was nothing in the 30-year deal to do with the firm supplying its own wind energy to its mills.

However, Energy Minister René Legacy confirmed to Brunswick News that JDI had asked the province to copy Nova Scotia’s reforms.

“They want us to look at it,” Legacy said. “Large industrial users can produce their own electricity and use the transmission grid. It helps make electricity more affordable to industry, but we have to study the admin fee on the transmission part so that it’s revenue neutral for other ratepayers.”

Legacy clarified that by “we,” he meant NB Power, which is still in talks with the firm.

McInerney, JDI’s spokeswoman, told Brunswick News she had nothing to add, and that “if and when announcements are made, they will be made.”

The energy minister cautioned nothing would change until his Liberal government hears back from the three experts it appointed earlier this year to review the way NB Power is run.

Those three experts, who are mandated to report back to the government with recommendations by March 31, recently spoke privately to large industrial firms such as JDI.

“There is a bucket in the comprehensive review on competitiveness for industry,” the minister said. “I just want to make sure we don’t create something in the Electricity Act that contravenes what the review committee feels is the best way to go. So, I’d rather see the whole picture before changing legislation.”

Legacy, a businessman before he went into politics, stressed that he wanted industry to be more competitive.

“It’s not just forestry. As a province, we want to be welcoming to industry so that they want to come to New Brunswick and create jobs. Energy costs are part of that equation, so we want to make sure we’re competitive.”

Unifor officials also met privately with the review committee in early December to push the same message.

“We have to look away from piecemealing any type of solution,” Murray said she had told the expert panel. “We have to come up with a solution that’s sustainable for jobs.”

This story from Brunswick News was written by Local Journalism Initiative Reporter John Chilibeck.