Briefly, the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New 
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and 
British Columbia own and manage their forests in¬ 
dependently. The forests within the provinces of 
Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and a strip of 
twenty miles wide on each side of the C.P.R. tracks 
through British Columbia, known as the “railway 
belt” are governed by the Forestry Branch of the 
Dominion Government. 
The People Are the Owners. 
In all Canada there are estimated to be about 
five hundred million acres of various degrees and 
values of forest growth. Only one third of this 
acreage contains trees that can be sold in the market 
as saw timber; this does not take into account pulp- 
wood or fuel or tie and pole material or small timber 
of any description. 
Of the five hundred million acres covered with 
good and poor tree life, only about fourteen million 
acres are owned b}" private persons. The enormous 
balance is owned by our governments, who are, as 
you know, the agents and trustees of the Canadian 
people. A good proportion of these wooded lands 
is under lease to lumber and pulp companies who 
can cut under regulations and on payment of a scale 
of dues to the public treasury. Our governments 
collect about seven million dollars every year from 
the owners of timber leases. If the lumbermen did 
not supply this large amount for running our gov¬ 
ernments, it would have to come direct from the 
people in the form of new taxes. 
Many people in Canada have come to believe 
that all the worth while timber has been handed 
over to corporations. This is not true. In Ontario, 
for instance, out of 150 million acres of woodland, 
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