Hewers of Wood, Drawersof Oil

This headline once again reveals the untainted truth; China is a capitalist nation and as a world power of capital is Imperialist.

PetroChina, Encana and the eventual export of B.C. natural gas

Regardless of the ideology proclaimed by the state, the fact is that China is a capitalist economy; even if it is a state capitalist one.

As Herr Dr.Marx points out it's about the relationships we have to the means of production, who controls it and who doesn't. In other words once you have industrial production and capital in perpetual production by a working class, capitalist society exists, regardless of its political superstructure. The transformation of peasants into an urban proletariat is the key function of capitalist means of production. And China fits that description as much as England did in the late 18th Century or America in the late 19th Century.

The irony in the relationship between Canada and China is that they are both state capitalist economies. One is more bourgeois democratic, the other is based on an authoritarian command economy. However the state, is crucial in both political economies in determining national interests.

In the case of Canada we are once again being the hewers of wood and drawers of water, a resource based export economy to developing industrial economies. Today we are hewers of wood and drawers of oil.

Is China Western Canada's new best friend?

``Between 2000 and 2010, Canadian exports to China have increased by 3,300 per cent. In fact, Canada surpassed Russia this year as the biggest exporter of softwood lumber to China.''

BC wood-culture push brings Chinese success

This is reminiscent of the original colonial model of Canada vis a vis France and Britain, and then our relationship with America. Now we deal with a modernizing industrial China, as their new resource base as we sell off our manufacturing to other global capitalists.

French Canada was initially a colony of resource extraction, not a colony of settlement. During brief periods when settlement became paramount, Canada was a theocratic society, reminiscent of modern Iran. And when settlement and development was finally pushed determinedly, Canada became a laboratory in
which Jean Baptiste Colbert, the father of French mercantilist economics, tested his theories with development schemes similar to Third World misadventures in the 1960s.

The irony is that the current Federal government in Canada is politically opposed to China, yet they espouse the virtues of free trade, going so far as to call themselves libertarians on this matter. But the fact is that the Harpocrites right wing ideology belies the political economic reality which is Canada, it has always been a state capitalist nation.

However the nature of Canadian political economy belies any true tradition of free trade. It evolved from mercantilism to state capitalism, without the problematic tendencies of free trade.

The first share capital corporations were the North West Company of Fur Traders, and the Hudson Bay Company, fur trading companies that still were mercantile, not really free enterprise. They relied on being monopolies. In fact all of the early capitalist development in Canada was monopoly mercantilism run by a few families. Whether it was fur trading or canal building.

Henry Hudson’s 1610 claim for Britain to the lands around Hudson’s Bay lay unexploited until 1670, when Charles II granted his cousin, Prince Rupert, a fur trade monopoly and rechristened the region Rupertsland. Rupert organized The Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudsons Bay (a.k.a.
The Hudson’s Bay Company, or ‘the Bay’), a joint stock company, to raise funds.10 The forts, trading posts, and ships required - as well as the risks inherent in the fur trade - were beyond the resources of even the wealthiest individual families. Thus, the Hudson’s Bay Company, like the British East India Company and the Dutch East Indies Company, was among the first joint stock companies formed.

In 1779, British and Loyalist merchants in Montréal established the
Northwest Company to compete with the Hudson’s Bay Company for the fur trade, contesting the legitimacy of the latter’s monopoly. The original founders of the Northwest Company included Simon McTavish, Todd and McGill, Charles Grant, Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, the firm of McGill and Patterson and five other merchants and firms.15 The resulting wealth gave the same names prominence in
banking, shipping, and railroad promotion decades later. Since the Hudson’s Bay Company had its own militia, the Northwest Company needed one too.
Their battle for market share is best described in military terms.

During this period, the most entrepreneurial regions of British North America were the Maritime Colonies – Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Abraham Cunard, a master carpenter, arrived in Halifax in 1783 and rapidly established stores, mills, lumbering, sawmills, shipbuilding, an accounting firm, and other businesses. Despite strong competition from other “timber barons” like Gilmour, Rankin, & Co.,
Philemon Wright & Sons, William Price, and John Egan, A. Cunard & Son prospered. Many timber barons, including Christopher Scott, John and Charles Wood, and the Cunards, expanded into shipbuilding and shipping. Bliss (1986, p. 135) remarks that all of these fortunes were technically founded on theft, for the timber was almost all harvested from Crown land. The Cunard Line prospered,
especially after it obtained a monopoly on delivering the Royal Mail between Britain and the Americas.

The biggest enterprises in Upper Canada in the early 19th century were canals. The government built the Rideau Canal from the Ottawa River to Lake Ontario. William Hamilton Merritt organized the Welland Canal, linking Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, as a joint stock company controlled by the Family Compact. After providing generous state subsidies and loans, the Upper Canada government finally
bought out the owners of the failing venture in 1841. The newspaperman William Lyon Mackenzie charged that the whole project was a scam to enrich the Family Compact. Upper Canada’s public finances never recovered.

The creation of both the CPR and CN rail companies was facilitated by the Canadian State, including early on in the last century when immigration was promoted to help develop Rail lands.

Economic expansion paralleled an immigration boom. Under Laurier, Canada’s population rose 44%. Western Canada was rapidly populated along the proliferating transcontinental CPR system. All sectors of the economy grew rapidly and simultaneously to accommodate this infrastructure investment,
and the millions of new consumers flooding in. The situation thus closely resembles what Murphy et al. (1989) call a big push – rapid development sustained by the simultaneous expansion of many interdependent sectors, so demand for intermediate and final goods grows apace with their supply.
The railway, and the immigrant settler farms springing up around it created an economic low pressure zone. Every sort of new business was needed to supply the railroad, the settlers, and all the othernew businesses opening to serve them.

Canada's corporate structure was always mercantile state capitalism. In fact the origin of the Canadian State coincides with the development of the Railways.

The colony’s political leaders felt hamstrung by their inability to subsidize such new ventures. Francis Hincks, an entrepreneur and Member of Parliament, partially solved this problem with a new Municipalities Act, which let towns float debt. A more complete solution appeared in 1849, when Canada began guaranteeing railroad debt, but only if prominent politicians, such as Hincks and Galt, were
on the board to “guarantee good management.” After a brief financial crisis in 1849, a boom and bust in railroad stocks ensued, and railroad construction resumed on a grand scale. Although railroads built honest fortunes, like that of the engineer Casimir Gzoski, corruption was endemic. Sir Allan Napier
MacNab, president of the Great Western Railway, served Canada as chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Railways and Telegraphs. The grandest project, the Grand Truck Railroad, run by Prime Minister Hincks, was ineptly built and almost unusable. A British lobbyist hired by Hincks to lobby
members of parliament wrote:I do not think there is much to be said for Canadians over Turks when contracts, places, free tickets on railways, or even cash was in question.
A Barings investigation exposed rampant fraud, kickbacks, and deceit; and Barings blocked further Canadian listings in London to obtain a veto over additional debt financing and guarantees in 1851. This merely tested the ingenuity of the colonial political elite in circumventing such checks. Railway subsidies became a top government priority. According to Naylor (1975), railroad construction and
financing in colonial Canada were “appalling even by the standards of the day.” Virtually every important politician now moonlighted as a railway officer or director, and railway subsidies both enriched political insiders and drained government coffers. Current, past, and future Prime Ministers Francis
Hincks, Alexander T. Galt, and John A. MacDonald, respectively, and most of their cabinet ministers all had railway financial ties. In 1858, Alexander Galt, now Finance Minister, subordinated Canada’s sovereign debt to railroad common stock and raised the tariff to obtain funds for larger railway subsidies. By the 1860s, Canada had both a shoddily built, poorly run railroad system and a near bankrupt
government.
Now, only union with the solvent Maritime colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick promised fiscal rescue. When the United States abrogated the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866, Galt lowered the tariff slightly on manufactured goods to match those of the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick colonies,
in preparation for their union with Canada. In 1867, British investors blocked New Brunswick and Nova Scotia financing in London to force such a union. The resulting confederation was the Dominion of Canada, a self-governing entity within the British Empire. Canadian independence is usually dated to 1867, though Responsible Government came earlier and Canada remained within the Empire long after. Since the Canadian parliament assumed almost all of the powers of the parliament in London in 1867, this date is probably more appropriate than any other.

When it comes to politics those who complain that China is a one party state overlook the fact that Alberta is a One Party State as well. The longest running one party state in North America! And of course Alberta as a resource based economy, is looking to China to sell to.

Alta.'s economic future lies in Far East

Asia’s state-owned companies have taken significant positions in Alberta’s resources over the past year-and-a-half. Encana, the second-largest natural gas company in North America, announced a $5.4-billion joint venture deal with PetroChina Co. Ltd. last Wednesday, adding to its Canadian projects. Sinopec Corp., Korea National Oil Corp., and Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production Public Co. Ltd. all made recent investments in Alberta. China Investment Corp. also struck a deal last year.

Like Albertans the Chinese people believe they have a peoples government. Like those on the right who mythologize Alberta's history as a perpetual enclave of right wing individualism, those in China believe that their way of life is good and it is thanks to the government. Even if like in Alberta, it is a minority that elects the government.

ZACHARY KARABELL: Right now, the Chinese government is a good government in that it's providing more affluence to more people in a way that, from anything you can glean, many people in that particular society find minimally acceptable. But I don't know if we would say that's good governance.


IAN BREMMER:You don't get to vote in China. Yet many of them seem reasonably happy with the government they have had for the last 30, 40-plus years. We're going to have to address that.

One interesting point that I want to throw out. I was with Tony Blair a few months ago. He was talking about the fact that we needed to step up and really show our leadership in the G20 and all the rest. My response was, as I raised at the beginning of this question, "The Chinese are much happier with their government today than a lot of us sitting around the table are with our own. How do you address that? How do you respond to that?"

Tony Blair said, "When you look around the world, you see that people want democracy. It's a very tough question, but ultimately, the Chinese will come around; when they get richer, they're going to understand that we have the right system."

Yep just like Alberta, we might eventually have a real democracy here to.


Without an industrial policy in Canada, we will continue to be hewers of wood, and drawers of water and oil. And despite the hang wringing from the right wing about human rights in China, capitalism has no such qualms about making deals, after all the only thing that matters is the bottom line. Without developing secondary and tertiary industries and new industries, we will remain a resource economy with all the flaws that brings.

SEE:

His Masters Voice

Stiglitz On Market Fundamentalism

The New Imperial Age

China Fuels US Inflation

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

Neo-Liberal State Capitalism In Asia
China: The Triumph of State Capitalism
US vs China for Global Hegemony
China No Longer Red Nor In The Red

China Needs Free Unions

Japanese State Capitalism

China's Trickle Down Economy

New Asian Dragon

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RONA Vs Greenpeace

What is behind Greenpeace's attack on RONA three weeks ago? The Eastern Canadian home retailer, who has a strong base in Quebec.

Canada's largest home renovation retailer said yesterday it cannot comply with the more environmentally friendly lumber standards demanded by Greenpeace.

About 75 per cent of the lumber products sold at RONA Inc. stores meet the environmental standards of three certifying bodies, a company spokesperson said. But of that 75 per cent, only 15 per cent of wood meets the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council, often considered the most stringent certification program.

Earlier this week, Greenpeace blasted RONA and other retailers for using suppliers that chop down trees from endangered areas of Canada's Boreal Forest.

Canada's forest companies are no angels. For more than a century after Confederation they were, in fact, looters. But government-mandated reforestation and advances in silviculture since then make it hard to swallow Greenpeace's claims that Canada's boreal forest is "indisputably" sick.

What's indisputable is that the boreal forest is a massive storehouse of greenhouse gases that covers 58 per cent of Canada's territory. That 70 per cent of it is commercially inaccessible. That only 0.5 per cent is logged in any given year. That Canada has a deforestation rate of zero. And that in Ontario and Quebec, Abitibi and Kruger are cutting much less than their annual allotment in the face of slumping lumber prices.

What's more, forestry engineers - a group that indisputably loves the forest every bit as much as Greenpeace - marvel at the boreal forest's capacity to regenerate itself more than any other type of forest in the world. Experts are also finding that self-regeneration - whether after natural fires, insect epidemics or logging by humans - may be a more effective way to promote biodiversity than intensive replanting.

All of which makes Greenpeace's attack on Abitibi curious enough. But why does Rona get blacklisted and not IKEA or Home Depot? Greenpeace says it's because the latter two retailers have made specific undertakings to source FSC products. But IKEA conceded in April that only 4 per cent of the wood used in its Chinese factories - the source of most of its furniture - meets the FSC grade.

Much of the wood used in Chinese furniture manufacturing is illegally logged in Russia and Myanmar.

Massive deforestation in Russia, Asia and South America is a real, verifiable, contributor to global warming. And when reforestation occurs, it's on plantations, as in China or Brazil, where such monoculture is biodiversity's worst enemy. Yet, those are the same countries whose low-cost lumber, pulp, paper and furniture are decimating Canada's forest industry.

RONA (TSX: RON), the largest Canadian distributor and retailer of hardware, home renovation and gardening products, has been made aware of a document published earlier today by Greenpeace and wishes to make the following clarification.

Sustainable development has long been a priority at RONA. The Company has a responsible purchasing policy that applies to all of its products. With respect to forest products, the Company does not buy any product derived from endangered species and favours the purchase of products that bear Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) as well as ISO 14001 certifications. Furthermore, RONA ensures that all of the goods it procures, whether forest products or other, have been produced in conditions that respect human rights and the environment. RONA applies these principles in its choice of suppliers, sub-contractors and other business partners.

Over the past 10 years, RONA has recovered 3.6 million containers of paint in Quebec, or over 30% of all paint recovered in the province. Left unrecovered, old paint may be poured out into nature - a real threat to the environment. By promoting the recovery of these products, RONA is offering the public an economical and ecological alternative to burial in landfills or incineration.

From collection points at stores across RONA's Quebec network, the old paint and containers are then sent to the RONA distribution centre in Boucherville. From there, the old paint is sent to Peintures recuperees du Quebec. About 80% of the old paint is reconditioned and put back on the market. Leftover latex and alkyd paint, stain and varnish are all accepted in the recovery and recycling program.

RONA (TSX:RON), the largest Canadian distributor and retailer of hardware, home renovation and gardening products, has announced a 9.1% increase in sales and an 11.6% increase in operating income for the second quarter of 2007. This increase in sales and income can be attributed to acquisitions made in the last 12 months and additional measures taken at the beginning of the quarter to stimulate sales and earnings growth in a business environment that was more difficult than anticipated.

Net earnings increased by $6.2 million or 7.7%, from $80.0 million in the second quarter of 2006 to $86.2 million in the second quarter of this year.

Operating income reached $161.8 million in the second quarter of 2007, an increase of $16.8 million, or 11.6%, over 2006. EBITDA margin rose from 10.8% in 2006 to 11.0% in the second quarter of 2007.

Net earnings for the second quarter of 2007 stood at $86.2 million, or $0.74 per share, diluted, compared to $80.0 million in 2006 or $0.69 per share, diluted. This represents an increase of 7.7% in net earnings and 7.2% in diluted earnings per share.

Well its a back handed attack on Abitibi which is in merger talks with American forestry products company Bowater.

In a recent report, Greenpeace cited logging and pulp companies such as Abitibi-Consolidated, Bowater, Kruger and SFK Pulp as being directly responsible for destroying nearly 200,000 square kilometres of boreal forest.

The activists charged pulp manufacture, SFK Pulp, with purchasing wood
chips from destructive logging operations. Two of the main suppliers of wood
chips to SFK Pulp, Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater, log in the last remaining
intact areas of the Boreal Forest, in the habitat of threatened species as
woodland caribou, and in areas where industrial logging is opposed by local
First Nations.
"Logging companies like Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater continue to deny
that there's anything wrong in Canada's forests," said Ferguson. "But anyone
who's seen the satellite images showing massive fragmentation, the scientific
reports showing species extirpation, and the news reports describing closure
after closure of mills and towns knows different."

A detailed new Greenpeace report,Consuming Canada's Boreal Forest: The Chain Of Destruction From Logging Companies To Consumers, traces the journey of clear-cut trees from virgin boreal stands to retail store shelves.

The group fingers what it calls the worst despoilers of northern timberland: Abitibi-Consolidated Inc., Bowater Incorporated and Kruger. The first two merged last month, creating a corporate colossus with cutting rights to an area of the Ontario and Quebec boreal as big as the state of Nebraska.

Also named are a list of retailers buying products from the three – part of a campaign to get firms to buy forest products made either from recycled material or from logging operations certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Consuming Canada's Boreal Forest: The Chain Of Destruction From Logging Companies To Consumers,

The report release follows on the hanging of a massive banner from the Montreal headquarters of Abitibi-Consolidated two weeks ago. Canada’s Boreal Forest stretches across the north of the country, from Newfoundland to the Yukon. It represents a quarter of the world’s remaining intact ancient forests and stores 47.5 billion tonnes of carbon in its soils and trees. Ontario and Quebec's intact Boreal Forest represent 14% and 18%, respectively, of the entire country’s intact forest areas.

The demands of the Logging Companies are to:
o Cease logging in all intact forest areas, caribou habitat, and mapped endangered forests immediately, and work with governments and nongovernmental organizations to formally protect these areas;
o Shift to FSC certification across all tenures to ensure environmentally and socially responsible management of these forested areas, and ensure all products are FSC-certified;
o Commit publicly to not pursue licensing and new logging activities in currently unallocated areas of the Boreal Forest; and
o Refrain from logging without the prior and informed consent of First Nations whose territories are affected.

Left Nationalists like Mel Hurtig and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians may want to ask Greenpeace if this really helps Canada. Attacking indigenous capitalist industries like Abitibi and Rona.

While we ponder the silence over the sale of Abitibi to Bowater in the MSM and among the politicians. You see that was yesterday's news. Before Alcan and Stelco.

A union representing forestry workers said the move by Abitibi and Bowater should cause concern in government and community circles.

"There are many issues underlying this announced merger which should raise alarm bells in Ottawa," said David Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. "Our forest-based industries and communities are already in crisis with the loss of some 10,000 jobs over the past few years.

"Our history with mergers and acquisitions has been that so-called 'synergies' really mean more mill closures, job losses and devastation in our communities," he said.

The deal continues a wave of consolidation in the forestry sector as companies try to get bigger to deal with increased competition and to cut an increase in operating costs due to higher fuel, transportation and raw material costs and the rising Canadian dollar.

For example, Montreal-based Domtar (TSX: DTC) is expected to soon close a $3.3-billion deal to muscle up its operations by merging with the fine paper division of U.S.-based Weyerhaeuser, one of the world's largest forestry companies.

The marriage of Abitibi and Bowater is just the latest move in a tectonic shift that sees North America forestry players jostling to grow and compete with the rest of the world, said Bowater president and CEO David Paterson, who will move to Montreal to head the new corporate entity.

"This is a continuation of what I see as a long-term trend of a globalization of the market, that North American companies have to be able to compete with Asian, South American and European producers and they have to do that from a low-cost platform and that's what we're trying to create here."

However the merger is still in the works. Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater Provide Merger Update

And with the high dollar and housing crash in the U.S. comes the warning of more plant closings.

The double blow of slowing home construction and falling newsprint demand is hitting wood and paper companies and forcing them to try to adapt quickly. The strategies of choice: consolidation and cost-cutting.

Shareholders of Montreal-based Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. (nyse: ABY - news - people ) and Bowater Inc. (nyse: BOW - news - people ), based in South Carolina, approved a deal last month to combine the two companies. U.S. regulators still need to give approval before the two can become AbitibiBowater Inc., which would be the third-largest forest products company in North America.

The deal could close by the end of September, and may lead to plant closures.

"U.S. regulators are expected to require mill closures in order to let the merger go through," Banc of America Securities analyst George Staphos told investors in an industry update last week.

Since May, Abitibi shares have dropped 21 percent, Bowater fell 23 percent, International Paper by 16 percent and Weyerhaeuser 21 percent.

But in Roberval–Lac-Saint-Jean it was a crucial issue, leading to the election of a Mayor who can get things done. Grease the palms, bring in a bit of largese; some federally funded development projects to offset in some small way the devastation occurring in primary forestry in the region.

Quebec experienced the greatest decline in the country, as production decreased by 20.4 per cent to 1.18 million cubic metres, or 19.1 per cent of total Canadian output.

Quebec's production has declined monthly by double digits since July 2006.

Producers face reduced overall harvest quotas from the provincial government. They have also reduced volumes to fit a quota agreed to under option B of the softwood lumber agreement with the United States.

As Jean Paul Blackburn has in the neighboring riding. After all Abitibi is the major employer in that region.

The new mega forestry giant Abitibi/Bowater will face a tremendous responsibility to employees and their communities as the planning now begins to integrate the two paper companies.

Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater will now put the troops to work planning detailed integration of their global pulp and paper and lumber business. Both company’s Canadian mills are being bled by high energy and fibre costs and especially by the Canadian dollar’s surge – as all products are sold in U.S. dollars. “Costs will have to be cut right across the system,” said David Paterson, Bowater’s CEO who will become CEO of the new Abitibi/Bowater. John Weaver of Abitibi-Consolidated would not comment on possible rationalization in eastern Canada, where the highest cost mills are located.

While Bowater has to pay for a less than stellar environmental record.

Bowater Inc. will pay $42.5 million to Weyerhaeuser Co. to settle a dispute over costs at a Canadian pulp and paper plant Bowater sold to the company in 1998. Bowater and Washington-based Weyerhaeuser (NYSE:WY) have been arbitrating a claim regarding the cost of environmental matters related to the mill.

And while the Conservatives assert a lassiez faire attitude to corporate takeovers, try and pawn the disaster that their Softwood Agreement onto the Charest government, they realize that Quebec expects state capitalism in some form. And that is how you keep seats.

 MONTREAL, Sept. 7 /CNW Telbec/ - A new Leger Marketing poll commissioned
by Greenpeace reveals that 86 per cent of Quebecers support the suspension of
logging in the last remaining intact areas of Boreal Forest in the province.
Additionally, only 18% per cent of respondents believe that forest
companies and the government of Quebec are managing forests in a way that
serves the public interest and forest workers.
"The public's lack of confidence in the government and logging companies
is significant," said Melissa Filion, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace.
"Without taking quick and concrete action to protect the forest, the
government and logging companies will not regain the public's trust."

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Softwood Redux

Harper said this would never happen again when he forced Canada's Lumber industry to accept his billion dollar bribe to the Americans with his Softwood Lumber Accord.

The U.S. asked an independent panel to resolve a dispute over a softwood lumber accord with Canada, saying the country is ignoring a cap on exports to the U.S. and that Canadian firms are still getting unfair subsidies.

Just like Harpers new formula for Provincial transfer payments were to end the years of bickering over equalization.

Didn't happen.

This is a government that likes to say it doesn't just talk it takes action..... forgetting Newtons Third Law.



SEE:

How The MacDonald Commission Changed Canada

Job Loss It's The Environmentalists Fault

There Is No Free Market

Behind the Eight Ball

US Housing Market Crash

Between a Bloc and A Hard Place

Softwood Republican Slush Fund

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Lumber Consolidation

Keta K has an interesting article on the consolidation of Abitibi and Bowater, two competitors in the lumber industry in Canada.

Once again confimring what Herr Dr. Marx had to say about the nature of centralization of competing capitals.

That production rests on the supreme rule of capital. The centralization of capital is essential to the existence of capital as an independent power. The destructive influence of that centralization upon the markets of the world does but reveal, in the most gigantic dimensions, the inherent organic laws of political economy now at work in every civilized town. Marx

And the merger of Abitibi and Bowater is only the begining of consolidation in the lumber industry in order to compete globally. Having been hewers of wood for America, the lumber industry in Canada failed to develop secondary and tertiary industries and markets that could meet global demand. It was easier to just sit back and sell to the Americans.

Watch for Canfor to be the next tree to fall in the M&A forest.

Newsprint maker Abitibi-Consolidated's merger with Bowater, announced Monday, may seem like the union of two dying elephants in a dying industry. A less cynical view would be that it continues a healthy trend. Domtar's big cross-border deal with Weyerhaeuser, set to close this month or next, will double the Montreal firm's sales. In B.C., West Fraser Timber forked out $325-million (U.S.), one-quarter of its market capitalization at the time, for 13 mills in the southern United States. There's more deal making to come because all of these companies are still too small, and for investors, one question lingers: Where's Canfor?

So why isn't Canfor larger already? For that matter, why doesn't any domestic forest company rank in the top 20 on PwC's global ranking? The Finns are there, as are the Japanese, the Aussies and the Singaporeans. Sweden's Svenska Cellulosa has a market cap of about $15-billion (Canadian) -- that's more than Canada's largest nine forestry companies put together.



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