Canadian sawmills have done a brisk trade during the pandemic, but some private owners of woodlots in New Brunswick say they’re being frozen out of the boom. Unlike other provinces, which have raised royalties for harvesting on Crown land, New Brunswick has kept its rates frozen for about six years.
“I was getting more money for my wood in the 1990s,” lot owner John Sabine told The Globe and Mail. “A lot of people aren’t bothering to harvest at all because prices are so poor. It’s not worth it.” Sabine says that stance means millions of dollars in lost revenue for both the provincial government, which owns half the commercial forestry lands in the province and private lot owners.
Crown rates have stayed stagnant even amid record mill profits, The Globe and Mail’s sources say because they are tied to the private market. That system, they argue, incentivizes mills to underpay for their wood, especially with J.D. Irving securely in place as the dominant buyer in the province’s market.
