|
As in the other
provinces of Canada, so it was in New Brunswick— the home Government
early sought to regulate the timber wealth. England always thought
much of her naval greatness and sought to assure in her North
American colonies a sufficient supply of white pine for masting for
her ships. Thomas Baillie was appointed surveyor general in 1824,
receiving the following explicit instructions:
Whereas we have
been graciously pleased to give instructions unto our right trusty
and right entirely well-beloved cousin and counsellor, George, Earl
of Dal-housie, Captain General and Governor-in-Chief in and for our
Province of New Brunswick in America, for the regulation of his
conduct in granting lands to our loyal refugees, who have taken
refuge in that Province, and others who may become settlers therein,
and amongst other things to signify our will and pleasure that no
grant whatever be made of lands within our said Province until our
Surveyor-General of the Woods, or his Deputy lawfully appointed
shall have viewed and marked out such districts within our said
Province as reservations to Us, our Heirs and Successors, as shall
be found to contain any considerable growth of masting, or other
timber fitting for the use of our Royal Navy; and that our
Surveyor-General of Lands in our said Province shall not certify any
plots of lands ordered and surveyed for any person or persons
whatsoever, in order that grants may be made out for the same until
it shall appear unto him by a certificate under the hand of our
Surveyor-General of the Woods, or his Deputy, that the land so to be
granted is not part of or included within any district marked out as
a reservation for Us, our Heirs and Successors, as aforesaid for the
purpose before mentioned.
It is therefore our
will and pleasure that and you are hereby authorised and empowered
to give license in writing to any of our subjects in our Province of
New Brunswick, to cut down such white pine and other trees growing
upon the waste land which you shall judge to be not proper for the
use of our Royal Navy.
INVESTIGATION OF
1833.
In 1827 the sale of
limits by auction instead of by fixed fees was instituted, any
purchase to be limited to a maximum of 1,200 acres to one person.
Subsequent regulations in 1829 ordered a survey before sale and
sought to prevent unnecessary waste in the cutting of timber. The
receipts from timber limits in 1831 were £10,820. Joseph Cunard had
been granted in 1831 a reservation for ten years on the Nepisiguit
River above the falls on condition that he would improve the
waterfall and secure a license to cut one thousand tons of timber
per annum.
This arrangement
created criticism and, together with other complaints, brought about
an investigation of timber administration, and a committee of the
legislative assembly was appointed in 1833 to make an investigation.
At this investigation it appeared that it was the custom to receive
from April of one year to May 1 of the following year applications
for timber berths from all persons indiscriminately, so long as they
were accompanied by a fee of forty-five shillings. On the latter
date the applicants were notified whether their applications had
been accepted or rejected. If there were two or more applicants for
one piece of land all were rejected but one and the lucky man was
given three months in which to pay the dues, amounting to Is per ton
for white pine and Is 3d for red pine. In addition there was a tax
of 3d per ton for expenses of survey. Mill reserves might be
obtained by the same method, but in 1833 a new regulation made it
necessary to secure these mill sites by public auction.
In 1837 the home
Government assigned to the Provincial government the regulation of
Crown lands and the enjoyment of revenues therefrom. New regulations
were adopted providing for five-year licenses and dues of 2s on
white pine and 2s 6d on red pine.
The average cut of
New Brunswick for the years 1835,1836 and 1837 was 116,600 tons of
timber (16,820,000 feet of lumber) and the dues were £16,416. The
average annual export of pine and birch timber during the same
period was 249,926 tons, of masts and spars 619 and of deals
73,250,423 feet.
The following table
showing the growth of the industry is given in Dr. Abraham Gesner’s
work on New Brunswick, published in London in 1847:
The shipments from
St. John in 1822 were: Pine timber, 79,122 tons; birch timber,7,520
tons; masts and spars, 2,147; poles, 383; lath-wood, 10,047 cords;
boards, planks and deals, 8,277,000 feet; staves, 2.392.000 pieces;
shingles, 2,842,000 pieces; shooks, 268 bunches. In 1832 the exports
from St. John of deals, boards and scantling had increased to
22,000,000 feet; in 1842, to 43,000,000 feet, and in 1852, to
186.314.000 feet. Then came reverses followed by a period of
depression which lasted several years, but in 1872 the shipments
under this head stood at 236,639,000 feet.
During the early
’40’s the trade in sawn lumber, which had been rapidly increasing
while that in square timber had been falling off, began to take the
lead in volume and importance. In 1835 the square timber trade was
far in advance, the values of the exports of forest products for
that year being: Square timber, £291,817; boards, £13,437 ; deals,
£104,150; staves, £12,969. For 1839 the returns of exports from the
port of St. John giving quantities as well as values (in returns
from other ports quantities are not specified) were as follows:
Square timber, 255,647 tons, value £277,998; boards, 6,622,000 feet,
£16,641; deals, 75,969,000 feet, £189,252; staves, 1,858,000,
£8,318. Six years later the sawn lumber exports considerably
exceeded the shipments of square timber, the following being the
returns for 1845 from St. John: Square timber, 244,846 tons,
£275,451; boards, 10,537,000 feet, £26,342; deals, 127,860,000 feet,
£319,650; staves, 1,008,000, £4,536; total, £625,979. The values
above given, it may be noted, are in sterling money, the pound
sterling being a trifle under $5. The “pound” of the old Canadian or
Halifax currency is equivalent to $4 and in these old records it is
not always clear which is meant.
The contributions
of the lumber industry to the public revenue were comparatively
insignificant until the middle of the century. The receipts of the
Provincial government on account of timber in 1849 were £1,821,
omitting fractional currency; in 1850, £2,304; in 1851, £1,851 and
in 1852, £5,256 (probably Halifax currency). In 1853 an attempt was
made to put the industry on a more conservative basis and to give
limit holders a guarantee of permanency of occupation. Previous to
that time it appears to have been the practice to submit all the
holdings to public competition every year, with the obvious result
of encouraging production, each licensee being anxious only to
realize as much as possible from a limit that might pass into other
hands in a few months. Accordingly the upset price of mileage was
advanced from 10 shillings ($2) to 20 shillings ($4) per square mile
with a proviso for renewal for three years in case as much as $10
per mile were paid. The report for that year of Surveyor General R.
D. Wilmot refers as follows to the change:
Great complaints
having been made by those engaged in the lumber trade that the
practice of annually putting up all the timber berths to public
competition bore injuriously as well on the trade as on the revenue,
the expense incurred in building camps, erecting dams, cutting roads
and other matters incident to the business being so great that they
would prefer paying an increased rate of mileage if they could
thereby secure the right of renewal for a longer period than one
year. The
Government, in
order to meet in some degree the views of the lumbering interest,
determined to offer the timber berths at auction at the upset price
of 20 shillings per square mile, giving the purchaser who bid it off
at 50 shillings or more per mile the right of renewal for three
years at the rate it was bid off. Ninety-seven persons, holding
962)4 square miles, are accordingly entitled to the privilege of
renewal under this regulation.
The receipts from
timber that year increased to £8,668.
In 1844 an export
duty was laid on logs. In 1867, when New Brunswick entered the
Canadian confederation, the export duty was abolished, a special
allowance of $150,000 annually being made by the Dominion government
to the Province to compensate it for the loss of revenue. In 1867
the receipts from timber were $80,882.68, the sum of $56,415.58
being contributed by export duty. Another important change was made
in 1874 when the duties were based on the cut of lumber and licenses
were made renewable for two years.
TERM OF LEASES
INCREASED.
In 1883 the
Government concluded that it was time to call a halt in the policy
of alienating large tracts of public lands unfitted for cultivation,
sales in fee simple and extensive railway grants having considerably
lessened the area capable of producing a revenue from its timber
product. It adopted the principle of retaining possession of all the
purely timber land remaining, and since then only small and isolated
lots of such land, which, by reason of local conditions, could not
be advantageously administered by the department, have been sold
outright. In the same year it was decided to increase the length of
the term for which timber limits could be leased to ten years, with
the result that the public revenue again showed a large increase.
The leases issued
for ten years expiring in 1893, the Government in 1892 appointed a
royal commission to make a full inquiry into the condition of the
lumber trade and into the best policy to be adopted in administering
the timber lands. The commission was so strongly impressed with the
desirability of giving the lumberman a permanent tenure of his
holding that it recommended the leasing of the lands in perpetuity.
This, however, was going farther than public opinion was prepared to
sanction, but the Government proposed by way of compromise—a way
most governments have—to grant leases for twenty-five years
reserving the right to increase the mileage rate and fix rates of
stumpage. The result was that a decision was reached to grant
licenses renewable from year to year for twenty-five years, making
it possible for a license issued in 1893 to be renewed until August
1,1918. Under
the present plan
the licenses are sold at public auction at $20 per square mile, with
an additional charge of $8 for renewal. The dues on pine and spruce
were fixed at $1 a thousand feet and in 1904 increased to $1.25. Ten
thousand feet of lumber must be cut each year on each limit.
In 1883 the amount
realized from sales was $38,462 for 3,117 square miles. Ten years
later under the new long-lease system the lands were sold at public
auction for twenty-five years, the amount received for premiums and
leases in 1893 being $89,830. There were then issued , 1,387 leases
at an average price of $17.25 a mile, and since then the number has
steadily increased until practically all the available Crown lands
of the Province have been brought under lease. In 1899 1,170 square
miles were leased at an average of $21 a square mile. The policy of
long leases has resulted in material benefit to the lumbermen and
contributed not a little to the prosperity of the trade. The
receipts of the Provincial government for 1903 from sales and
renewals of timber licenses were $46,898 and from stumpage dues
$122,630, making a total of $169,528.
The first act for
the preservation of forests from fire was passed in 1885. By its
provisions fires must not be started between May 1 and December 1
except for clearing land, for cooking and for other necessary
purposes. The penalty for failing to take the necessary precautions
in the selection of the places for these fires and in their
extinguishment after they have served their purposes includes a fine
varying for $20 to $200. Railway locomotives must be equipped with
spark arrestors and section men must be given instructions to watch
for and extinguish fires caused by railway trains. In 1897 further
legislation to protect the forests from fires was secured when
statutory authority was obtained for the appointment of forest
rangers. The year 1903 was a notable one for unusually severe forest
fires. It was estimated that during that year two hundred million
feet of timber was destroyed by fire. The conflagration wiped out an
entire village besides destroying many other buildings.
Some important
changes in the mileage and stumpage rates and conditions under which
licenses are issued took effect in 1904, all being in the direction
of greater stringency. Under the regulations now in force the upset
mileage on limits is $20 a square mile, and the mileage payable
yearly on renewals is $8 a square mile. Licenses are to be for not
more than ten nor less than two square miles and the licensee may
be required to cut
ten thousand superficial feet a square mile. The holder of timber
limits is not permitted to manufacture a log measuring less than
eighteen feet in length and ten inches in diameter at the small end.
The stumpage dues are as follows:
The following
statement, taken from the surveyor general’s reports, shows the
quantities and kinds of timber cut from Crown lands during the
fiscal years ended October 31, 1902 and 1903 respectively:
This statement, it
should be borne in mind, covers only the cut upon public lands under
license and takes no account of the very large quantity taken from
forest lands belonging to private owners.
 |
