Keith said Irving's interest in acquiring Bowater's land in Maine had nothing to do with the company's losing some of its timber harvesting rights on the 2.5 million acres of public land owned by New Brunswick. In New Brunswick, land owned by the province is called crown land. About half of New Brunswick's 14.6 million acres of productive forest lands is provincially controlled. Most of the more than 7 million acres of crown land is leased to Canadian forest products companies. These companies, which have long-term leases, manage the land under specific provincial restrictions and guidelines and harvest it to feed their mills.
Companies pay stumpage fees to the province for every tree they cut.
Companies that cut on crown lands cannot directly export the raw timber out of New Brunswick until it has been processed or value has been added, according to provincial officials. A dispute over cutting rights on crown lands surfaced in 1995 when a young Micmac, Thomas Peter Paul, was arrested for harvesting bird's-eye maple on crown lands, which was sold to a Maine lumber mill. During Paul's prosecution, two New Brunswick justices ruled that Canada's aboriginal communities have rights to hunt, fish, trap, and to cut trees on all crown land. The issue has been appealed to the Supreme Court in Canada, where it is expected to be heard sometime in 1999 or 2000. Earlier this year, former Premier J. Raymond Frenette offered New Brunswick's 15 aboriginal communities 5 percent of the annual allowable timber cut on crown lands, which means the forest products companies collectively will give up 5 percent of their annual timber cuts.