With Lumber Prices at Near Record Levels, Alberta Looks to Expand Forest Products Harvest

According to a leader of the Bigstone Cree Nation, just as lumber prices hit record highs, a drive to increase Alberta’s forest harvest is allowing members of a northern First Nation to become resource owners, as well as timber-gathering contractors. The First Nation’s logging company, Bigstone Forestry Inc., was formed with the help of Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc. many years ago to help supply its pulp mill near Athabasca with logs from its forest management area. In early May, the First Nation won its own slice of Alberta forest. It now has the right to harvest 21,000 cubic meters of coniferous wood a year from previously unallocated Crown land in a remote region about 300 kilometers north of Edmonton. In the recently ended 2020-21 fiscal year, the province of Alberta reaped timber dues — which are adjusted monthly based on current prices — of about $350 million, more than triple the $99 million earned in the previous year and seven times the $51 million from 2015-16. Meanwhile, the levy paid by the industry for forest improvement activities jumped to $160 million because of the high prices, versus $19 million in 2019-20 and a paltry $2.7 million in 2015-16. However, when compared to contributions from Alberta’s oil, gas and coal companies, lumber is only a small, but important, fraction of the province’s income.