RECOMMENDATIONS 17 



"His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the 

 Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario enacts as follows : 



1 . This Act may be cited as ' ' The Counties Reforestation Act." 



2. The Municipal Council of a county may pass by-laws :— 



(a) For acquiring by purchase, lease or otherwise, such 

 lands designated in the by-law as the council may deem 

 suitable for reforestation purposes ; 



(6) For planting land so acquired and for preserving 

 and protecting the timber thereon ; 



{c) For the management of such lands and the sale 

 or other disposal of the timber grown thereon ; 



{d) For the issuing of debentures from time to time for 



the purpose of providing for the purchase of such lands to an 



amount not exceeding $25,000 to be owing at any one time. 



3- No by-law shall be finally passed under this Act until 



the same shall have been approved in writing by the Minister of 



Agriculture. 



4. (a) Municipal Councils of townships in districts without 

 county organization shall have all the powers, privileges and 

 authonty conferred by paragraphs (a), (6), and {c) of section 2 

 hereof, on councils of counties. 



(6) The councils of such townships shall have power and auth- 

 ority to levy by special rate a sum not exceeding $200 in any 

 year for the purpose of providing for the purchase of such lands." 

 While this legislation is undoubtedly of the right kind, it would 

 seem that, on account of financial inability, these provisions by them- 

 selves are not apt to promise a rapid development of municipal own- 

 ership. In order to overcome this difficulty, it has been suggested that, 

 if the Province sees in municipal ownership a solution of the problem, 

 it should hand over to the counties, free of cost, limits on which licenses 

 have lapsed, under conditions which would tend to assure the results 

 looked for. 



While we may readily agree that such municipal ownership increases 

 the interest of the resident population in the property, and hence, 

 especially in its protection against fire, which is the foremost need, yet 

 there are some practical arguments, which are mainly financial, against 

 this policy. The need of control by the Doininion, for the regulation of 

 water supplies, may also, in part, clash with such a plan. 



While, under municipal ownership it might be easier than under 

 Provincial or Dominion ownership, to utilize profitably the small values 

 that even a mismanaged wood-lot can often still yield, large areas of 

 these lands not only contain no values of any kind, but, to become 

 useful at aU, require expenditure for planting ; others to yield better 

 and quicker results require expenditure in thinning. These constitute 

 present expenditures for the sake of future returns. Technical advice 



