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Monday October 24, 2005
Citing the continued decline in smoking, Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. is shutting the last of its manufacturing facilities in the country and slashing 650 jobs as it transfers the work to Mexico.

The Montreal-based company -- owned by British American Tobacco PLC of London -- said yesterday it will shut Canada's largest tobacco making plant -- built in Guelph, Ont., in 1959 -- next year.

A facility in Aylmer, Ont., as well as a processing plant there, will be shuttered in 2007, the company said in a press release.

A total of 555 positions in Guelph will be cut, as well as 80 in Aylmer and about 15 at head office in Montreal, the company said.

"The yearly decline in tobacco sales is affecting the company's manufacturing, and its unit costs have escalated to a level where the company can no longer ignore the situation," Imperial Tobacco said.

Imperial Tobacco's tobacco volume in Canada has declined by 38 per cent over the past 10 years, from 32.7 billion cigarettes at the end of 1994 to 20.5 billion in June of this year, it said.

Imperial closing Canadian plants
The Ottawa Citizen
Random Thots
Letter to the Editor

I'm still smiling... about a recent editorial cartoon by the Spectator's own Graeme MacKay; the one about Imperial Tobacco leaving Canada.

As awesome as the cartoon is, there is a clearly unintentional error and an omission.

The error:  Very few Merchants of Death smoke.  In fact, I suspect that the percentage of them who smoke is even lower than that of the general population, given what they know about the product they so aggressively peddle (primarily to kids, especially in Third World countries)...as well as when they knew it (i.e., long before the established medical/scientific communities did).

The omission...and something that more clearly explains his vacillating:  Paul Martin is a (former?) Merchant of Death.  While his job on the Executive Committee of Imasco (the parent company of Imperial Tobacco) officially ended in the mid/late '80s, he continues -- by both his actions and his inaction, as both Finance Minister and Prime Minister -- to support his old pals at the Nicotine Cartel (formerly known as the tobacco industry).

Again, great cartoon... and while all developed nations need to seriously look at prohibiting the nicotine cartel from setting up shop in Third World countries, I look forward to more similar cartoons in the near future.  There's only one thing better than smoke-free...and that's to be completely tobacco-free!

ONE (Imperial Tobacco) DOWN, TWO (Rothman's Benson & Hedges and JTI-Macdonald) TO GO!

Errol E. Povah

President, Airspace Action on Smoking & Health