Amount Quebec charges in stumpage fees per 1,000 board-feet of softwood: $50 U.S.
Amount charged across the border in New England: $110.
Amount B.C. charges: $95 U.S.
Amount in Washington state and Idaho: $330.
Amount Saskatchewan charges in stumpage fees: $20.
Amount charged across the border in Montana: $200.
Does the U.S. have endangered-species legislation: Yes.
Does Canada: No.
Percentage of B.C. Forests Ministry workers who said in a survey that their ministry does not have enough inspectors to monitor logging: 86.
Percentage who said employee morale at the ministry is low: 87.
Amount the B.C. government gets paid in fees for a truckload of softwood cut in public land: $10.
How many Quebecers wanted clear-cutting banned in a 1999 survey: 87 percent.
How many said “the big forestry companies are pillaging the northern Quebec forests”: three in four.
What an internal 1998 Quebec Natural-Resources Ministry report said about whether logging is done sustainably: “The department is unable to state with any degree of certainty whether or not the sustainable yield is respected. Monitoring is deficient. Doubts have been expressed about existing control systems, which do not appear to give an accurate reflection of real timber harvests.”
Amount of logging in B.C. that is sustainable per year: 51 million metres³.
Amount the province allows loggers to cut: $70 million metres³.
Amount by which the actual cut exceeds the sustainable level: 37 percent (in some areas of B.C., the sustainable cut is exceeded by 300 percent).
Sources: Sierra Legal Defense Fund,
New America Foundation, Le Devoir, B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union.
