Private woodlot owners in the Pontiac locked out of key provincial programs
Tashi Farmilo
Private woodlot owners in the Pontiac are facing structural challenges that limit their ability to compete in Quebec's forestry market, and the province's 2026-2027 budget does little to address them, according to Cash Allard, Director General of the Office des producteurs de bois du Pontiac (OPBP).
The numbers illustrate the imbalance. According to Quebec government statistics, 92 per cent of the province's forests are publicly owned. Yet private forests account for 17 per cent of Quebec's productive forest area, according to a 2025 survey by the Fédération des producteurs forestiers du Québec. In 2023, public forests supplied 68 per cent of the roundwood that fed Quebec's forestry industry, compared to 21 per cent from private forests, according to the FPFQ's June 2025 congress report.
The core problem, Allard says, is market access. When local industry demand falls short, a government-subsidized program allows timber to be shipped outside the region to find buyers. But the program primarily channels wood from public lands, locking private woodlot owners out. In an interview with the Pontiac Journal about the budget, Liberal MNA André Fortin raised the same concern. "There are private woodlot owners that would benefit greatly from being able to access this program and right now they can't," he said. Fortin argued the budget should have required industries to source a guaranteed portion of wood from private lots.
The funding gap compounds the problem. According to Allard, nearly 90 per cent of transport assistance funding in Quebec goes to public forests, leaving private producers in the Pontiac, the Laurentides, and the Outaouais to share the remaining 10 per cent of an envelope that is already shrinking.
At the heart of the issue is a legal principle known as residuality. Under Quebec's Sustainable Forest Development Act, wood from public forests is supposed to complement private forest supply, not compete with it. Allard says the opposite is happening, and private woodlot owners in the Pontiac are losing market share as a result. In February, the FPFQ condemned amendments to Bill 11, provincial forestry legislation, arguing proposed changes to the auction system and royalty structure would further erode that principle. The federation, which represents more than 162,000 private woodlot owners province-wide, called the 2026-2027 budget a further disappointment, saying the government had missed its last concrete opportunity before the election to recognize private forest producers.
The budget does contain forestry measures, including the elimination of the annual levy on wood supply licences and changes to the royalty structure, both aimed at reducing costs for companies harvesting from public land. Fortin told the Pontiac Journal those steps were positive, but not enough. "They are positive, but they are still very slow measures compared to the needs of the industry," he said, pointing to American tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber now exceeding 45 per cent and declining demand.
Allard says what is needed is an increase in transport assistance directed at private forests, rigorous enforcement of the residuality principle, stronger forest management support, and industrial investments that create real market access for privately sourced wood. He noted that a government investment in the Thurso mill did not help private producers because that facility does not purchase roundwood directly from them.
"When the markets are not there, it is the producers, their families, local communities, and the entire sector that bear the consequences," Allard said. "In the Pontiac, these issues are not theoretical. They translate directly into lost opportunities and wood that too often remains standing or on the ground for lack of buyers."
