David Eby, Premier of the Canadian province of British Columbia, spoke on 10 April in Vancouver at the Council of Forest Industries (COFI) conference, which was attended by 650 representatives of the forest sector. He called on the Canadian government to pay particular attention to the critical situation in the forest sector and to make the timber question the federal government's chief priority.
D. Eby used the conference to urge the US to buy its timber from Canada rather than from Europe and Russia, pointing out that American consumers themselves are paying for a dispute the federal government is resolving too slowly. D. Eby told the delegates that the US lacks the production capacity to meet domestic demand and is therefore trying to cover the resulting shortfall with purchases from other countries. “To cover this shortfall, the Americans have dramatically increased their timber imports from Europe and, most surprisingly of all, even from Russia,” the Premier of British Columbia stressed. “That costs US residents far more and substantially increases the cost of house building.”
In February this year D. Eby visited India, meeting local government and business leaders in Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Bengaluru in an effort to attract 200 billion dollars' worth of investment over the coming decade. “With unjustified US tariffs affecting jobs and businesses in British Columbia, it is more important than ever that we deepen our strategic relationships with international partners,” D. Eby said. The province's aim is to build new partnerships in sustainable forestry, clean energy and responsible mining.
Alongside the trade conflict with the US, D. Eby acknowledged that market volatility and extreme weather continue to add pressure on Canada's forest sector, which is already having to absorb 45% in tariffs and duties on its timber exports.
Conference participants criticised the government's handling of regulatory matters, arguing that delays in issuing logging permits are a structural obstacle to the forest sector's competitiveness. Ward Stamer, a member of the legislature, noted for example that although the government has helped cut the review period for logging permits from 40 days to 25, the overall time taken to approve them has risen from 18 months to as much as three years. “When people say we are the most expensive in North America, that is no joke,” W. Stamer stressed. “Add the tariffs and the other problems that arise throughout this process, and it will not be long before another sawmill closes.”
Trevor Halford, leader of the British Columbia Conservative Party, said that the problems created by the issuing of logging permits have already “taken workers' jobs away from them”. Redundancies and mill closures are the visible result of a system that T. Halford called “completely broken”. He pointed to the constant uncertainty forest sector companies face when planning logging operations. Canada has the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, and British Columbia's courts apply it in rulings that prohibit or restrict logging.
The forest sector in British Columbia, Canada, accounts for some 95,000 jobs. The conference stressed that the timber supply chain is currently in total crisis, brought on by the twin burden of US customs tariffs and Canada's regulatory environment, which has blocked access to timber and now threatens the very existence of forest sector companies.