For months, Canada’s escalating trade confrontation with the United States was measured mostly in tariff percentages, negotiating deadlines and increasingly sharp political rhetoric. In Témiscaming, Quebec, those numbers are becoming something much more tangible: threatened paycheques.
Rayonier Advanced Materials plans to temporarily halt most production at its sprawling forest-products complex, putting roughly 400 unionized jobs at risk and threatening businesses tied to the mill. The shutdown was originally scheduled for September 15 but has now been postponed until October 3 after an unexpected burst of Canadian orders. That reprieve matters, but it does not remove the larger threat. New U.S. tariffs have landed on a facility that was already struggling with weak markets and operating losses, turning one Quebec mill into a stark example of how quickly a continental trade dispute can reach workers far from Ottawa and Washington.
The Shutdown Has Been Delayed, Not Cancelled
September 15 was supposed to be the day much of the Témiscaming industrial complex went quiet. RYAM had announced an economic shutdown for an undetermined period, covering virtually all remaining production at the site. Roughly 400 unionized workers were expected to be affected, alongside managers and other employees. Only essential infrastructure, including the wastewater-treatment operation and Boiler No. 4, was expected to continue running. For a community closely tied to the mill, the announcement transformed an international tariff dispute into a local employment crisis almost overnight.
Then came a modest but important reprieve. New orders from Canadian customers allowed RYAM to keep the plant running beyond the original deadline, pushing the planned stoppage to October 3. Unifor welcomed the extra production because it means additional weeks of work and pay. Yet nothing fundamental has been resolved. There is still no announced long-term operating plan, and the tariff pressure that helped trigger the shutdown decision remains in place. The calendar moved; the underlying problem did not.
A 50% Tariff Changed the Economics Almost Overnight
The immediate shock came from Washington’s latest use of Section 338 of the U.S. Tariff Act. Beginning August 22, the United States imposed new duties of as much as 50% on billions of dollars of Canadian goods. Quebec’s government says the affected categories include various paper and paperboard products, and the Section 338 tariffs can apply regardless of whether products otherwise qualify for preferential treatment under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement. For manufacturers built around cross-border sales, that distinction is enormous.
RYAM said the additional duties helped make continuing operations at Témiscaming economically unsustainable. A mill can improve productivity, reduce waste and negotiate transportation costs, but a sudden tariff measured in tens of percentage points is difficult to absorb in a competitive commodity market. Passing the entire increase to American buyers risks losing customers; absorbing it internally destroys margins. That is why Témiscaming matters beyond one company. It demonstrates the speed with which trade policy can move from a presidential proclamation to production schedules, overtime decisions and ultimately whether employees have shifts to work.
The Mill Was Already Vulnerable Before Trump’s Latest Tariffs
The tariff shock did not hit a healthy operation with unlimited financial room. RYAM’s own financial disclosures show that its paperboard and high-yield-pulp business was already under considerable pressure. During the first six months of 2026, that segment recorded a $37 million operating loss, more than double the $16 million loss reported for the comparable period a year earlier. Lower selling prices, market-related downtime, higher logistics costs and a $13 million high-yield-pulp asset impairment all weighed on results.
Témiscaming had also endured an earlier restructuring. In 2024, the company idled its high-purity-cellulose operation, a decision associated with 275 job losses according to Quebec government records. RYAM subsequently decided to permanently cease dissolving-pulp production there. The remaining complex still has substantial industrial capacity: roughly 180,000 tonnes of paperboard and 290,000 tonnes of high-yield pulp annually. That history matters because the newest U.S. duties are better understood as a powerful additional blow to an already fragile business rather than the sole cause of every difficulty at the site.
Four Hundred Jobs Carry Enormous Weight in a Town This Size
Job-loss announcements can sound abstract when discussed at the national level. In Témiscaming, a potential 400-worker layoff is difficult to separate from the life of the community itself. Statistics Canada counted only 2,368 residents in the municipality in the 2021 census. The affected employees do not all necessarily live inside the municipal boundary, so comparing the two figures is not an employment ratio. Even so, it illustrates why a shutdown of this scale carries such an outsized social impact.
These are also not simply interchangeable jobs that can easily be replaced nearby. Pulp and paper facilities rely on industrial electricians, millwrights, operators, maintenance specialists, process workers and other employees with years of specialized experience. For families, an indefinite shutdown creates decisions that extend far beyond a temporary drop in income: whether to seek work elsewhere, whether to move, whether a spouse can remain employed locally and whether younger workers still see a future in the region. What appears in economic data as 400 positions can translate into hundreds of household decisions about mortgages, groceries, schooling and relocation.
The Damage Would Spread Well Beyond the Mill Gate
A forest-products complex does not operate in isolation. RYAM and regional officials have warned that a stoppage would affect contractors, suppliers, trucking companies and forestry businesses connected to the Témiscaming facility. Logs and fibre must be harvested and transported. Equipment needs parts and maintenance. Finished pulp and paperboard must move to customers. When production stops, those transactions slow or disappear even if the companies supplying them never appear in the headline employment figure.
The scale of the industrial ecosystem is visible in Quebec’s own forestry records, which list RYAM’s Témiscaming pulp-and-paper operation among the significant primary wood-processing facilities in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Unifor has emphasized that fibre demand supports forestry workers and sawmills supplying residual material used in manufacturing. Northern Ontario communities are watching as well because Témiscaming sits close to the provincial boundary and commercial relationships cross it. That multiplier effect is why plant closures can be particularly painful in resource regions: one production line may sit in a single municipality, but the income generated by it travels through a much wider network.
Canadian Orders Have Bought Workers Something Valuable: Time
The most encouraging development arrived from somewhere much closer than Washington. Several new orders from Canadian customers gave RYAM enough additional business to postpone the economic shutdown from September 15 to October 3. In practical terms, that means more production, more paycheques and more time for governments, the union and the company to search for an alternative. It also offers a small demonstration of what greater domestic demand could accomplish when access to a traditional export market suddenly becomes more expensive.
But a few weeks of orders cannot by themselves replace a deeply integrated continental market. Canadian manufacturers have spent decades building supply chains around relatively predictable access to the United States. Statistics Canada reported that 71.7% of Canadian merchandise exports still went to the U.S. in 2025, even after that share fell significantly from the previous year. Finding customers inside Canada, Europe or Asia is therefore not simply a matter of redirecting a truck. Products must match specifications, shipping economics must work, and long-term commercial relationships have to be built.
Ottawa Is Fighting Tariffs With Tariffs—and Billions in Support
Canada has responded to the newest U.S. measures with retaliation of its own. Effective September 8, Ottawa imposed counter-tariffs of 15%, 25% and 50% on C$27.6 billion worth of U.S. imports. The government says the measures match U.S. duties rate for rate and target sectors including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, electronics, pulp and paper. It is a deliberate attempt to demonstrate that American trade restrictions will carry economic costs on both sides of the border.
The federal government simultaneously announced $7.5 billion in new and enhanced support for businesses and workers affected by tariffs, on top of previously announced assistance. Measures include additional financing through regional development agencies and programs intended to help companies withstand tariff-related liquidity pressures. Ottawa has already directed assistance toward forest-sector companies elsewhere in Canada, including support for pulp operations in Alberta. For Témiscaming workers, however, the test is more immediate: government programs are meaningful only if they help maintain commercially viable production or create a realistic bridge to a new owner, product mix or customer base.
Governments Cannot Subsidize Away Every Structural Problem
Témiscaming Mayor Alain Gauthier has been pressing both Quebec City and Ottawa for help, arguing that governments should support new-product development and market diversification while the facility still has a chance to operate. He has also asked that tariff-related federal revenues be reinvested directly into affected communities rather than relying exclusively on loans. Quebec officials, meanwhile, have discussed ways of supporting the mill, and provincial programs had already been involved with RYAM before this latest crisis.
Yet public money faces limits. RYAM’s financial statements make clear that the remaining paperboard and high-yield-pulp businesses had operating challenges before the newest tariffs arrived. Government assistance can finance modernization, provide temporary liquidity or help find new customers, but it cannot permanently compensate for falling prices, high logistics expenses or a business that continuously sells products below a sustainable return. That leaves policymakers with a difficult balance: preventing an abrupt tariff shock from destroying otherwise salvageable industrial capacity without turning temporary emergency assistance into an indefinite subsidy for losses that have deeper causes.
Témiscaming Shows Why Diversification Is Easier to Promise Than Deliver
The broader Canadian response to Trump’s trade pressure increasingly centres on reducing dependence on the United States. That goal is understandable. In 2025, more than seven out of every ten dollars of Canadian merchandise exports still went to the U.S. The relationship is extraordinarily valuable precisely because geography, infrastructure and decades of trade agreements have made cross-border commerce relatively efficient. When that access becomes unpredictable, entire business models can suddenly look riskier.
Canada has already been expanding trade elsewhere. Statistics Canada reported that exports to non-U.S. destinations increased sharply in 2025, while the share going south of the border declined. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is also pursuing deeper economic relationships with Europe and other partners as the dispute with Washington continues. Témiscaming nevertheless demonstrates the timing problem. National diversification can take years; a plant facing uneconomic tariffs may have weeks. Workers cannot pay October bills with export opportunities that might mature several years from now. The long-term strategy and the short-term emergency therefore have to operate simultaneously.
October 3 Is Now the Date That Matters
The additional Canadian orders have prevented September 15 from becoming the shutdown date originally feared, but October 3 now hangs over Témiscaming. Unless enough additional business appears or the economics of U.S. sales improve, most remaining production is still expected to stop for an indefinite period. RYAM has not publicly established a firm restart timetable. The company has also previously explored options for divesting its paperboard and high-yield-pulp businesses, adding another layer of uncertainty around the site’s future.
That leaves several possible paths: more Canadian orders could extend production again; government support could improve the economics of modernization or diversification; trade negotiations could reduce the tariff burden; or another owner could see value in the facility. None is guaranteed. What is already clear is that Canada’s confrontation with the Trump administration is no longer confined to government statements and tariff schedules. In Témiscaming, workers have been given a few extra weeks before the consequences potentially arrive at the factory gate. For the community, that makes the trade war painfully concrete.
