Significant Improvements to New Brunswick Wood Market Benchmark Announced

According to Auditor General Kim Adair-MacPherson, a major irritant that helped to provoke US tariffs has been fixed and with it a potential lifeline to the New Brunswick (NB) forest industry. Her report released on Tuesday (10/20) says the province now has a better system for accurately calculating sales to mills from private woodlots, a benchmark that helps set royalties paid for timber from publicly owned Crown lands. An earlier report in 2008 by then-Auditor General Michael Ferguson concluded that the New Brunswick wood market “is not truly an open market” because of flaws in how the province surveyed private wood sales to set the Crown rate. “A lot has changed,” Adair-MacPherson told reporters. “There has been what we call significant improvements in the process and the methodology.” Adair-MacPherson says the process for measuring private wood sales is now working. “It’s a valid tool to use in setting the Crown timber rates.” But she says the province must now use the improved system to update rates annually, as required by law. The rates haven’t been updated since 2015. NB’s Natural Resources and Energy Development Minister Mike Holland says he was glad to see the audit. “We’ve listened, we’ve corrected some drift and we’re moving in the right direction. I’m very pleased that she came back and indicated that we have a functioning market here in the province.