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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Ground rent for provincial forest land in Ontario, dating back as it does to the mid-nineteenth century, is among the earliest means whereby the provincial government has sought and obtained revenues from the forest. As this charge on licensees of Crown timber-lands has been established for so long, it is pertinent to review its history and to record its place in the annual revenues yielded by the province's forests over the past century.
These annual forest revenues have in the past come chiefly from stumpage—the price paid for timber cut on Crown lands. Forest revenues have also included, besides ground rent, bonuses paid by licensees in order to acquire their limits at auction from the Crown, tolls for the use of certain timber slides built by the government, and small sums collected as penalties for trespass and other infractions of the law. Slide tolls ceased to form a part of provincial revenues after Confederation as they were then collected by the Dominion government. Today the province's revenue from the Department of Lands and Forests comes from a variety of sources. For comparison with the forest revenue of early days, forest revenue in this study is equated with the revenue of the Department's Division of Timber Management. This includes stumpage—the chief component and now comprising Crown dues and the Crown evaluation and bonus payments—ground rent, fire tax, mill licence fees, certain payments for scalers, and sundry other small items.
The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests for helpful comments and suggestions. The views expressed in the article, however, are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of either the Federal Forestry Branch with which he was connected when the article was written or the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests.
1 Canada, Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, 2nd Session, 3rd Provincial Parliament, vol. 8, App. 3, P.P.P.P. 1849.Google Scholar
2 Monopoly is here understood to occur in a local sense only. Apparently in this early period it was possible for an individual to acquire numerous timber licences in an area. This would reduce competition and permitted the speculative withholding of timber from current exploitation.
3 Occupied limits were those from which sufficient timber had been cut and extracted to comply with the timber regulations. Unoccupied limits were those on which the minimum logging operations had not been carried on.
4 12 Vict., c. 30 (Can.)
5 Ontario, Annual Report of the Clerk of Forestry for the Province of Ontario, 1899 (Toronto, 1899), 29–139.Google Scholar
6 Equivalent values were $30,624 for ground rent and $212,052 for total timber revenue at $4=£1, the conversion rate apparently used at that period.
7 30 Vict., c. 3, s. 129.
8 It is reported that when certain limits north of Sudbury were licensed in 1903 ground rent was set at $5 per square mile, but this appears to have been an isolated occurrence.
9 In correspondence with the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests.
10 Ontario, Report of the Ontario Royal Commission of Forestry, 1947 (Toronto, 1947), 52. (Author's italics.)Google Scholar
11 1 Eliz. II, c. 15, s. 8.
12 Ibid., ss. 22 to 29, particularly ss. 22, 23, and 24.