Grant to fund study of Canada’s forest property rights system

Vancouver– A multi-discip linary group of researchers from across Canada, led by Ilan Vertinsky of the Sauder School of Business, was awarded a three-year $750,000 competitive grant from the Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN) to examine and potentially redesign Canada’s forest management or tenure system.

The tenure system is the key mechanism that determines the manner through which Canada’s forests are managed, with each provincial government regulating the forests within its jurisdictions. The tenure system constitutes the key institutional arrangement that determines the manner through which forest resources (predominately on Crown lands) are governed and the property rights and obligations that those managing the forest hold.

This multi-phase project will assess the effectiveness of the current tenure institutions across the country; evaluate the impacts of these institutions on the cost and availability of timber which determine to a large extent the competitiveness of the Canadian forest industry; and examine and evaluate various tenure system experiments that have taken place within Canada and internationally. In addition, the project will assess how the different institutional arrangements affect the availability of non-timber forest benefits in general and the environmental impacts of the industry in particular.

The outcome of this project will be to develop specific proposals for new tenure arrangements within Canada and to organize regional workshops involving community, industry and government decision makers to define proposals for change and develop strategies for their implementation.

This research is being conducted in partnership with the governments of British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador. Among its industry partners are Tembec, Weyerhaeuser and Riverside. The Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN) is one of Canada’s 21 Networks of Centers of Excellence (NCE).

Details about the project can be obtained from:

Ilan Vertinsky
Phone: 604 822-9406 
E-mail: ilan.vertinsky@ubc.ca