Hines on “listening tour” of SW Nova Scotia

“We were talking about harvest methods, what the WestFor existence means to the area, and generally the state of the industry too” but, according to the article “When asked who approached who regarding the creation of the lease, Hines said he wasn’t sure.” Read more in LighthouseNOW (Mar 8, 2017).

It’s still not clear whether the province has signed the 10-year lease with Westfor. The article refers to it as a done deal “…WestFor Management Inc., the consortium of 13 mills that has a 10-year lease with the province to harvest on over 500,000 hectares of western Crown land…”.

Hines says “We strive for openness, there are no secrets…”, so I guess he would have made an announcement of any such agreement, and we can assume that it is still being negotiated.(?)

The article notes that “Some forestry operators are calling for access to WestFor’s stumpage rates to see if it’s more profitable for them to cut on Crown land, instead of purchasing from private lots. LighthouseNOW filed a freedom of information request to obtain stumpage rates, but the returned information was heavily redacted.”

No secrets?