Crown Land: Indicators and Statistics - Ministry of Forests

Crown land sites occupy around 50% of the area of all
such sites in the province (not including mill sites). 39
However, this sector is directly dependent on a vastly
larger area of Crown land that is administered under
the Forest Act and which accounts for around 96% of
the province’s total timber harvesting land base.
Sectors that do not use a significant amount of land
or Crown land, relative to other inputs, have been
excluded from GDP calculations in this section (e.g.
manufacturing, retailing, wholesaling, banking and
finance). While some businesses in these sectors
are located on Crown land under Land Act tenures,
they form only a small fraction of the sector’s total
economic activity. 40
39 That is, this estimate includes all log handling and storage
sites within the forest or between the forest and mills, but
not those at mill sites. Log handling and storage facilities
at mill sites are considered under NAICS to be part of the
manufacturing sector rather than forestry and logging.
40 A valuation dilemma arises in cases where Crown land is
used jointly with private land in the production of GDP. For
example, the water bodies of large BC Hydro dams are largely
on Crown land while the land on which the dams and power
houses are located is owned by BC Hydro in fee simple. Similar
issues arise in oil and gas extraction where wells can be on
private land but many of the access roads, processing facilities
and pipelines can be on Crown land. Likewise in adventure
Table 7 presents 2006 BC GDP generated by sectors
that significantly utilize Crown land. In total, these
sectors accounted for almost 40% of provincial GDP.
The sectors producing the largest percentage of GDP
were public services and residential, followed by
energy, and then transport and communications.
Table 7 also distinguishes between the provincial
GDP produced on all provincial Crown land and
the GDP produced on Crown land tenured under
the Land Act. The economic activity of the energy
and utilities sectors are very dependent on Land Act
tenures, while outputs of the forestry and mining
sectors are highly dependent on Crown land more
generally. For other sectors, less than a third of their
economic activity occurs on Crown land.
tourism, accommodation and the principle facilities of
operators are very often on private land but the operational
areas such as back country trails and river rafting sections are
on Crown land. Valuation options include: 1. Using the value
of the private and Crown land in their next best alternative
use (i.e. their “opportunity cost” in economic terms); 2. The
relative value of the land plus investments on each; or 3.
to ascribe the whole value to either the private land or the
Crown land. In this report, the range is based on the first and
second options while the most likely figure is based on the
first option.
Ministry of
Forests, Lands and
Natural Resource Operations
45