CANADA’S FOREST WASTE

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 May 1937, Page 10

CANADA’S FOREST WASTE

■lOOO SQ. Ml. GONE IN FIVE YEARS. The newsprint industry is using up Canada’s wealth of forests “at a prodigious rate” and getting little for it beyond wages for the industry’s workers. Charles Vining, president of the Newsprint Association of Canada, told the Canadian Club at Toronto recently. “We are consuming our forests at a prodigious rate,” said Mr. Vining. “A single Sunday issue of the New York Times means some 225 acres of our forest. The tabloid New York News, with its huge circulation, is using 60 square miles a year. “The Canadian mills, during the last five years of selling newsprint 'at a loss, have consumed at least 4000 square miles of forest, equivalent to a strip 12 miles wide stretching from Montreal to Toronto. “If we sold our gold as we have been selling our forests, one can almost say that we would wine the gold, pay the miners their wages, and then give the gold away,” Mr. Vining continued.

He asserted that the newsprint industry in 1936 “had an all-time high in tonnage production, but an all-time low in-price. Last month’s returns of shipments show a gain over last January of 25 per cent., and it seems safe to predict that 1937 means a new high record in tonnage production, although this rate of gain is higher than will be maintained for the full year. “In dollars the 1937 performance is absurdly sad. Overseas prices are substantially improved, but in the North American continent, which consumes SO per cent, of production, the 1937 contract price is up only 1.50 dollars, nearly 6 dollars a ton lowei’ than ths 1926 price. It is no advance at all ■because of rising production costs.” Mr. Vining said that the newsprint industry “is our largest single industrial investment with the exception of investment in hydro-electric power, and accounts for at least, two-fifths of Canada’s total power development. There are single mills which use more electrical energy each yeai’ than is used to light the cites of Toronto and Montreal combined.”

The industry brought to Canada between 1930 and 1935 “in spite of its disrupted condition, 563,000,000 dollars from foreign sources, compared with 475,000,000 dollars of gold production and 130,000,000 dollars of nickel exports. Newsprint income is spent in Canada, for nearly all materials of newsprint production are of Canadian origin,’ he said.