Timberwest has filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of British Columbia against the city of Campbell River.

This move follows Catalyst Paper's lawsuits against Campbell River, North Cowichan, Port Alberni, and Powell River.

All actions are over property taxes that the companies claim are too high and unfair.

TimberWest owns forested land within the city of Campbell River. Taxes on forested property in the city is taxed at about $24 a hectare. Now that TimberWest has applied to subdivide 65 hectares of that land for residential use, the city manager realized that TimberWest should be paying the same taxes on that land as other land developers, rather than the low rate they were charged.

Because the forest company had not identified all the lands it intends to ultimately remove from its forest landbase for development, and the municipality has a limited number of land classifications for tax purposes, the city had to either continue to charge the low tax for the development properties, or raising the rate on the entire class of managed forest lands.

However, the effect on TimberWest was to raise the taxes more than tenfold to $1,254,000 - a rate that Stephen Bruyneel, director of communications for TimberWest subsidiary Couverdon Real Estate, says is even higher than the residential tax rate - five times higher.

Read more:
TimberWest sues Campbell River (Times Colonist)
Catalyst takes city to court over taxes (Courier-Islander)
Catalyst suing N. Cow (The Citizen)