← Port Renfrew forest accountability

Who Profits, Who Pays: Forestry Finances And Public Value

Date prepared: 2026-06-03

What this is, and what it is not

A fair question about forestry near Port Renfrew is whether the companies involved are wasting public resources, or whether there is mismanagement or worse. This note does not answer that with an accusation. It cannot, because the records that would settle it are mostly private. What it does is turn the question into something records can address:

What can the public actually verify about who profits from this forest and who pays for it, and what is hidden?

No corruption, illegality, waste, or mismanagement is claimed here. Where the public cannot see the numbers, that is recorded as a transparency gap, not as evidence of wrongdoing. Concerns are written as public-value questions.

Two very different layers of visibility

Public companies (you can see a lot)

Several coastal operators are publicly traded and file audited financials. The clearest local anchor is Western Forest Products, which operates on the coast and Vancouver Island.

In fiscal 2024 most of the sawmill operators lost money, while the harvest and, in one case, the dividends continued:

[Fact: 2024 results releases; see data/corporate-accountability/public-company-financials.csv.]

Two things stand out, as questions rather than claims. A loss-making year did not stop harvesting, or, at West Fraser, dividends. And executive compensation is disclosed in each company's proxy circular but is not compiled here yet. The public-value questions are answerable from these filings: how much profit is made, how much goes to shareholders and executives, how much stumpage is paid for public timber, and how much leaves as raw logs versus milled locally.

Private holdings (you cannot see much)

The largest private timberland holders on the east coast of Vancouver Island are TimberWest and Island Timberlands, managed by Mosaic Forest Management. These are private, so detailed financials are not public. That is the central transparency gap on this layer.

The ownership matters. TimberWest has been owned by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) since 2011. BCI and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) have been limited partners in Island Timberlands since 2005. In 2018 the two were affiliated under Mosaic. [Fact: PSP Investments; Mosaic.] In plain terms, public-sector pension money owns the private timberlands, and a private manager runs them.

That sets up a real public-interest question, not an allegation:

If public pensions profit from this timberland, and the public may also carry the downstream costs of roads, sediment, fire, and lost habitat, where is the accounting that shows the net result to the public?

The detailed answer is not public, because the holdings are private.

Profit beside cost

The point of the full-cost-accounting work is that timber revenue is visible while the public costs are not. The corporate finances sharpen it. On the public-company side we can see revenue, and we can begin to see profit, payout, and pay. On the private side we can see almost nothing. On neither side can the public set those private gains against the public costs the logging may create, because the cost ledger is not disclosed.

Questions this supports (all records questions, not claims):

Does the public undercharge for its own timber?

The public's direct cash take is small: ESSA's multi-species average stumpage is about $6.55 per cubic metre against log values of $68 to $212 per cubic metre. Whether that price is fair is contested at the international level. In the long-running softwood lumber dispute, the U.S. Department of Commerce has formally found that B.C. sets Crown stumpage below market value and treats it as a subsidy passed to producers; the current preliminary combined duty is about 24.8 percent. Canada and B.C. reject that finding and argue the rate tracks the Vancouver log market quarterly and is fair value. [Fact, attributed: U.S. Commerce determinations; Government of B.C. softwood factsheet. We take no side on the trade dispute.]

The point for full-cost accounting is narrow and does not require picking a side: a serious outside party has argued for decades that the public undercharges for its own timber, and the public cannot check that against the appraisal records because those records are not open.

Governance and conflict structures (risk, not accusation)

These are structural features that warrant disclosure, framed with the evidence ladder in notes/data-coverage-and-deeper-research-plan.md:

None of these are wrongdoing on their own. They are reasons the financial and decision records should be open.

What is hidden and why it matters

The big gaps, recorded in data/corporate-accountability/research-backlog.csv:

Until those are visible, "are they wasting money or mismanaging it" stays unanswerable in public. That unanswerability is the finding.

Sources