Logging a majestic stand of hemlock and balsam in British Columbia's coastal rainforest costs logging companies $100 a cubic metre. Selling the hemlock gets them an average of $60 a cubic metre, the balsam gets them less. "We lose $40 on every cubic metre of hemlock that we bring to the sawmill," explains Steve Crombie of Interfor, one of B.C.'s large product exporters.  read more »

How dumb does Prime Minister Jean Chrétien think President George W. Bush can be? Very, very dumb, judging by the arguments over softwood lumber that our Cabinet ministers and trade officials had been floating prior to Mr. Chrétien's meeting with Mr. Bush yesterday. Only someone as thick as a plank could buy the lulus put out by our government leaders in what -- at over $10-billion per year -- is by far the most important trade dispute between the two countries.  read more »

The eco-extremists are poised to win their biggest battle yet over British Columbia's vast forest lands. But the eco-extremists aren't environmental groups. The extremists are the B.C. government and major forestry companies who are hell-bent on destroying the splendour of the province's landscape, even if they must do so at a loss.  read more »

Toronto's ban on cutting healthy, mature trees on private property will likely do more harm than good, an environ­mental group warns.

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Toronto City Council could not have thought up a surer way to destroy the urban forest than to pass a bylaw forbidding property owners to sell trees without the city’s permission.  read more »

An interview, for CBC Radio's Ideas program, with Lawrence Solomon about the ways in which competition, privatization, property rights, and other market mechanisms can work to preserve the environment.  read more »

RECREATIONAL use of Ontario's forests has the potential to bring far greater riches to the provincial econ­omy than logging, a new study com­missioned by the province suggests.  read more »

A Toronto-based environmental group, arguing that there's no longer any economic benefit to logging in Vancou­ver island's Carmanah Valley, is asking the British Columbia government to preserve the entire valley.  read more »

Shareholders in the forestry giant MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. would make more money by investing in Canada Savings Bonds than they will by logging British Columbia's disputed Carmanah Valley, a study says.  B.C. taxpayers will also make less money from the timber harvest than politicians are leading people to be­lieve, according to the study, to be released today by Environment Probe in Toronto.  read more »

AT FIRST GLANCE Larry Solomon seems like the an­swer to a businessman's pray­ers. An environmentalist who believes passionately in the free-market system, his call for the privatization of Crown land and public utilities has won him the praise of the conservative Fraser Institute — and the wrath of fellow en­vironmentalists.    read more »