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In a news release outlining its 2016 earnings, Colorado-based Westmoreland said the Coal Valley mine is a non-core asset, and that it was aggressively pursuing “strategic alternatives” for the facility, which typically suggests a potential sale.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

“A $70 per tonne fee would just make it financially impossible to export,” Williams-Derry said. “Right now, the market for thermal coal is pretty soft, and if coal companies are making a profit, it’s only a slim profit.”

The Coal Association of Canada, which is calling on Clark to back away from the “egregious levy,” warns the proposed coal tax would result in layoffs for all of the Coal Valley mine’s 300 full-time workers. The group said the move would also affect local contractors and the companies involved in shipping the coal, while hitting government royalties.

“This type of policy-making is not in the spirit of the barrier-free trade and would have significant impacts on coal production outside of B.C.,” the group said in a statement.

Clark has called on Ottawa to respond after the U.S. imposed an average duty of 20 per cent on softwood lumber imports from Canada, which will hurt B.C.’s forestry industry.

Photo by DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS

In the final leg of B.C.’s election campaign, Clark said this week she would impose a roughly $70-per-tonne carbon tax on thermal coal exports, if the federal government doesn’t act.

The proposed coal tax comes at a time that she is considered Alberta’s ally on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which would expose the province’s crude to overseas markets. Clark’s opponent, B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan, is a staunch opponent of the pipeline.

Notley said the provinces and the federal government should be working together on a response to U.S. softwood lumber tariffs, instead of adopting policies that create “winners and losers.”

— With files from The Canadian Press and Vancouver Sun.

rsouthwick@postmedia.com