Canada's forests supply the country's building and paper products industries and contribute one fifth of all the nation's exports. In the 1990s the national forest inventory recorded a total of 1.3 million square miles (3.4 million square kilometers) of forest land, of which 83 percent had been surveyed and almost 60 percent was in production. Not all of the forest is suitable for commercial exploitation. Some is located too far from a market to make it economical to cut. Along the northern edges of the boreal forest zone, the trees are too few and too stunted to be of commercial value, and some areas in the more accessible forests have such poor soils that the trees of their forests are not worth exploiting. In parts of the interior of British Columbia, the forests cannot be reached easily, though their timber is highly desirable. About two thirds of all trees cut in Canada are used for lumber, plywood, and wood products and the other third for pulp and paper.
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The boreal forests account for four fifths of Canada's forestland. The Great Lakes provide inexpensive and easy transportation of logs from the Shield to the sawmills and pulpmills on their shores. Good supplies of hydroelectricity, large bodies of water to carry off waste materials, and nearness to markets in the densely populated industrial regions of Canada and the United States are the major factors contributing to the profitability of this industry. Much of the hardwood used in furniture making in the southern parts of the provinces is cut from forests along the southern edge of the Shield. The St. Lawrence River provides a passage to the supply in the heart of the continent. Inexpensive newsprint from Canada has become the material used to print almost half the newspapers in the Western world.
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Even though the forests of British Columbia make up only about 15 percent of the nation's wooded area, they account for almost half the total volume of wood cut. This is because of the tremendous
size of the Douglas firs and Sitka spruces that grow on the Coast Mountains and the moist slopes of the Columbian Range. In the 1970s and 1980s the development of new techniques for using waste materials
from sawmills led the provincial government to assist in establishing pulp mills in the interior. This has revitalized the industry in the province.

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Mining

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More than one third of the total value of Canadian exports is in minerals. The search for mineral deposits to mine has always been a major driving force in the nation's development. When commercially significant deposits are found, towns spring up at the sites.
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The products of the mineral industry in Canada may be divided into four main groups: mineral fuels, metallic minerals, nonmetallic minerals, and structural materials. Petroleum and natural gas account for more than half of the dollar value of mineral production in Canada. The first free-flowing oil well in North America came into production at Oil Springs, Ont., in 1857--two years before the first well in the United States. But it was not until 1914, in Turner Valley, near Calgary, Alta., that a sizable petroleum and natural-gas field was discovered in Canada. The threat to oil supplies posed by World War II added urgency to the search for more deposits. The search was rewarded in 1947 when the first well of the huge Leduc field in central Alberta became operational. Later discoveries of oil and gas deposits have led to extensive development. Pipelines carry gas and oil as far east as Toronto and Montreal and gas to markets in the United States. Thick oil seeps through to the surface of the Earth in the Athabasca Tar Sands in northeastern Alberta. Huge machines scoop up the sands, and an elaborate steam-extraction process separates the oil. This is an expensive process, however, and the project has only been barely worthwhile since the early 1980s, when world oil prices began to drop in response to declining demand. Commercially valuable deposits of oil and gas have been discovered in the Beaufort Sea, in the Arctic archipelago, and off the Ungava coast of Labrador, but the cost of transporting the product to market is prohibitive. Because of the fragile nature of the Arctic environment and the danger posed by icebergs to shipping, an oil spill could become a monumental disaster. Therefore it is unlikely that extensive development of these resources will take place soon. Drilling is proceeding in the Hibernia fields in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, however, and in the gas fields near Sable Island, offshore from Nova Scotia. The provinces control natural resources found on land, but the federal government has claimed control over all
offshore deposits within the 200-mile limit of Canadian sovereignty.
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This has led to disputes with the governments of British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. In each case the federal government has worked out a revenue-sharing arrangement with the provinces so that their citizens may benefit from the probable profits. This is significant in Canada's Atlantic region, which is considered to consist of poor "have-not" provinces. Corporations based in the United States or in Europe own most of the oil and natural gas industry in Canada. Since Canadians want to control their national energy resources, they have bought several foreign-owned petroleum companies since 1980 and have formed Petro Canada, a federally controlled corporation. Igneous rock, material once so hot that it was liquid, that flowed into the granitic rock of the Canadian Shield and the sedimentary rock of the other geological areas of Canada is the major source of the great variety and quantity of metallic minerals found across the country. Because of the vastness of the northern region, not all deposits are known; and, because of the great distances from potential markets, not all the known significant deposits are mined. Yet prospecting for metals is pursued with vigor in the Canadian hinterland.
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Metallic minerals are of great significance in the Canadian economy. Even though world demand for iron, nickel, and other metals is down and the processing of these metals in areas of the world where labor costs are lower than in Canada has caused a falloff in production since 1980, almost 30 percent of the value of the nation's total
mineral production comes from metallic minerals. Gold, mined primarily at Hemlo on the north shore of Lake Superior, is the most important. Copper from all provinces except Alberta and Prince Edward Island and zinc, for which Canada is the world's leading producer, rank next in dollar value of production. Nickel, iron ore, uranium,
silver, and other metals also are mined in quantity.
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Although the nonmetallic minerals mined in Canada do not constitute a huge share of the dollar value of annual production, they are highly significant to the economy. Coal is required for electrical generation, and Canada is the world's fourth-largest exporter of the mineral. Cement, sand, gravel, and gypsum are essential to the construction industry. Potash from the world's largest deposits in Saskatchewan is the basis for fertilizer manufacture. Although world demand has declined, production of asbestos from the mines in Quebec is an important industry.

Fishing, whether coastal or inland, is controlled by the federal government. Management of fishing, however, has been delegated in different ways to the provinces. Quebec has assumed management of its marine and freshwater fisheries. Ontario and the three Prairie provinces manage all the fisheries within their
jurisdiction, and British Columbia manages all freshwater fisheries except those dealing with migratory fishes such as salmon. The federal Department of Fisheries manages all fisheries in the Atlantic provinces
and the northern territories.
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International agreements have given the country some control over some fishing areas beyond 200 miles from shore, the 200-mile limit. Fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy in the east and in the Georgia Straits, Hecate Strait, and Queen Charlotte Sound in the west are reserved exclusively for fishing by Canadian fishermen. Beyond these limits the Canadian government has granted fishing rights to other nations as well but regulates the amounts of fishes that may be taken.
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A historic decision in 1984 was made by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands, granting Canada 1,336 square nautical miles of fishing rights near Georges Bank in the Gulf of Maine between Nova Scotia and New England. Fishing in the Atlantic, however, is economically troubled. Competition from other countries and the high cost of modernizing both fishing and processing equipment are major obstacles. Even so, Atlantic fisheries count for three quarters of the nation's annual production of 1.8 billion dollars. Inland fishing is not nearly as important on a commercial level.