The Pontiac Forest Products Producers Board is on a lifeline, its management shared at its most recent AGM, pointing to the dwindling numbers of local producers paying levies to the organization and the decrease in wood being pulled out of the bush as factors making it impossible for the marketing board to break even year over year.

“We are kind of in a financial pickle,” said the board’s general manager Cash Allard at the annual gathering at St. Paul’s Anglican Church hall in Shawville on Apr. 16.

“This year we may be okay, we might make a few dollars, but we do anticipate going negatively each year, until we get a mill in the area.”

The board, which currently has 77 members, helps local loggers harvesting private lots in the Pontiac get their wood to market at the best price possible.

In exchange, members pay the board a levy on the wood they sell, which helps the board keep its lights on and pay the salaries of the general manager and office manager Stephanie Mayhew working to support the producers.

While membership is up by 10 people since 2023, it’s down from 91 in 2021, and according to Allard, still far from the membership levels the board needs to break even.

“To break even at the marketing board, without getting any assistance from anyone else, we would need to sell 45,000 tonnes more, and that’s a lot,” Allard said, describing a more than 50 per cent increase in production from the 80,000 tonnes produced this year.

“Five years ago we were only 25,000 tonnes away from that mar. When Smurfit-Stone was here, we were way over.”

He said at a bare minimum, the board needs to increase its membership by 10 producers in the next year which, at an average of 1,000 tonnes of wood per producer, would bring in additional $20,000 in levy fees for the board.

This, according to local producer Matt Dagg, is no easy feat. The precarious nature of the local industry means lenders are less inclined to finance large equipment purchases, which makes it challenging for new producers to get into logging.

As you mention forestry in this area, any financial assistance you could get, they don’t touch it [ . . . ] because of the fact that it’s a risky business,” Dagg said.

Allard said on top of this, to qualify as a producer, loggers need to own at least four hectares of bush, which makes it difficult to bring in producers from elsewhere.

To make ends meet for the time being, the board passed a resolution to put a pause on collecting the rolling fund contribution from producers, which is 25 cents per cubic meter sold, and putting that fee instead towards financing its own operation.

“So we’re not increasing the levy but instead we’re going to redistribute it from the rolling fund and put it towards our budget,” Allard explained, noting the board’s rolling fund, which currently sits at about $200,000, can’t be touched. “It will equate to about $20,000 and that will help cover costs.”

Allard was clear that this is a band-aid solution, and does not mean the board is in the clear.

Allard said producers rely on the temporarily closed Resolute Mill in Maniwaki, which he said is now owned by Domtar, for softwood sales; on Louisiana-Pacific (LP) where producers sell panel wood; and on Domtar’s mill in Windsor, Que. where producers sell hardwood pulp thanks to a subsidy program from Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests which helps pay for costs of getting the wood to Windsor.

“If we lose Domtar, for example, the MRNF trucking subsidy program, that would put a lot of pressure on us,” Allard said. “And then of course, if LP and Domtar were to disappear, we would have to make a hard decision.”

Considering a merger

Also at last week’s AGM the board passed a resolution committing itself to begin exploring what a partnership or collaboration might look like with other local forestry organizations, including other Outaouais wood marketing boards and the Groupement forestier du Pontiac.

This came after a conversation about the potential future necessity to merge with other boards, to consolidate resources and ensure the Pontiac board isn’t simply absorbed into its neighbours’ boards in the case that it goes bankrupt.

“In the interest of all the Pontiac producers we want the marketing board to stay in the Pontiac, but right now, without a mill, and some kind of investor coming into the area, there’s a good chance within five years we’ll really have to consider shutting our doors,” Allard said.

“[Merging] doesn’t necessarily mean we would lose representation in the Pontiac, but if we wait until we’re bankrupt, we have no power.”

Pontiac warden Jane Toller, also in attendance at the meeting, urged the board to not move too hastily.

“Just from what I’ve heard, if you could work with the Groupement, and just have your own board here in the Pontiac . . . I just think that the whole circumstances of this whole MRC are so different from everything else. Forestry built the Pontiac and we hope for some good news fairly soon,” she said, alluding to progress she said she has made on bringing a solution to the pulp and biomass hole in the local market.

Dagg, one of the youngest loggers at the meeting, said he supports looking into some form of collaboration.

“Basically if we don’t do something, by the time my kid is ready to work, there’s going to be no board to work with,” he said. “I think doing what you’re saying and talking to the other boards, it can’t be a bad thing.”

Mayhew, office manager and board secretary, emphasized passing this motion was a critical step in showing the province that the board was doing what it could to survive.

“We have to show the régie this time that we are trying to stay here, or stay afloat,” she said. “Whatever that ‘afloat’ is going to be.”