Province proposes changes to wood tenure reform plan

News — 18 January 2011

The government of Ontario has released some proposed changes to the reformed forest tenure proposal. With a very large industry outcry, the province has taken into consideration the questions and concerns relayed at many open houses held last spring.

Changes in the tenure reform will include the implementation of two Local Forest Management Corporation (LFMC) pilot programs. These will be the government agencies that were outlined in the initial proposal, and will manage Crown forests and oversee the competitive sale of the timber in a given area. The location of these pilot programs is yet to be announced.

The initial plan was to create five to fifteen LFMCs to cover the entire province, which resulted in a lot of unanswered questions from the public.

The second proposal put out by the province is to create Enhanced Shareholder Sustainable Forest Licences that would consist of a group of mills and/or harvesters that collectively form a new company to manage Crown forests under the Sustainable Forest Licence (SFL) that is issued to them.

This proposal would follow the co-op system that is currently in place with local mills and wood harvesters, and seems to be working very well.

The changes will see their day in legislature, sometime in the spring session, which begins in late February.

The future of the LFMCs and the SFLs are based upon the provincial wood supply competition. Michael Gravelle, Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry says a handful of conditional offers were distributed before Christmas, and another round sent out the second week of January. Although Gravelle won’t reveal the number of letters sent, he does state that another round should be going out in the next week or two.

Once the conditional offers are returned to the Ministry, the successful applicants will be announced. The goal is to use the fibre that is not being harvested within the industry, and to allow the smaller companies and newcomers to the industry, access to fibre supply.

There are many employment opportunities in the area sitting idle due to the delay in the wood supply competition, including approximately 100 available jobs for a proposed bio-mass plant that is stalled due to fibre supply.

By Ally Dunham

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