The Value Chain panel at the 2026 COFI Convention brought together perspectives from across the sector’s supply chain, with participants including Nick Arkle, CEO of Gorman Group; Kelly Marciniw, Chief Operating Officer of Zirnhelt Timber Frames and Chair of BC Wood Specialties Group; Todd Chamberlain, General Manager of the Interior Logging Association; and Blair Dickerson, Vice President of Public Affairs Canada at Domtar. The session was moderated by Sonya Zeitler Fletcher, Vice President of Market Development at Forestry Innovation Investment.

Asked by Zeitler Fletcher about where Gorman Group is moving as it relates to a regional cluster, Arkle described an approach to bringing together First Nations, communities, manufacturers, and value-added producers within a defined geographic area around a shared and secure fibre supply. He said the cluster model is not about subsidization but about competition and collaboration — attracting investment, ideas, and talent to a region where the conditions for success exist. He described First Nations involvement as the first step in the value chain, not an afterthought, and pointed to the First Nations Forestry Council’s Business Connect initiative as a grassroots example of the kind of relationship-building that underpins the model. He said the goal is to bring together all those who depend on wood flowing in a region — from primary manufacturers through to mass timber, biofuels, and biochemicals — and said everything that can be produced from hydrocarbons today can potentially be produced from wood in the future. The foundation for all of it, he said, remains predictable, affordable access to fibre.

Chamberlain raised workforce as one of the most pressing challenges facing the logging contractor community — and one that does not get enough attention alongside the fibre access conversation. He said the sector has an aging workforce, with some log truck operators still working in their seventies, and that the pipeline of younger workers is not keeping pace. He said regulatory requirements for commercial driver training add cost and complexity, and that equipment operators need a formal trades designation and training pathway — including simulator-based programs of the kind used in US forestry colleges — if the industry is going to attract and develop the next generation of skilled workers. He said the ILA is working with the First Nations Forestry Council and BCIT toward a trades program for equipment operators and sees it as essential.

Dickerson said Domtar’s experience operating across multiple Canadian provinces has produced consistent lessons. Working with communities and showing them the benefits of the industry at every step is non-negotiable, she said, and high-trust Indigenous partnerships — such as Domtar’s long-standing relationship with the Meadowlake Tribal Council in Saskatchewan — produce the kind of stability and responsiveness that makes difficult situations manageable. She said those lessons need to be replicated and shared across the country, and that the sector’s goal of supplying jobs is ultimately what enables communities to flourish.

Marciniw said that from the perspective of BC Wood members — most of whom do not hold tenure and depend entirely on the value chain for their input materials — supply reliability is critical. She said having only one supplier for certain materials creates significant risk, and that the interconnected nature of the value chain means one link’s fibre challenge becomes everyone’s problem downstream. She also pushed back on the idea that forestry is a sunset industry, arguing that the message going out to students and career-changers will determine whether the sector attracts the people it needs. She said students deciding where to focus their careers will not choose an industry they hear described as in decline, and that getting a positive and accurate message out is as important as any policy change.

Asked whether their organizations can move at the speed of opportunity, all four said yes — with conditions. Arkle said yes if the right conditions can be assembled, and that the regional cluster model is precisely about creating those conditions at a local level. Marciniw said yes because the industry has no choice — forestry is a solution to too many pressing global challenges, from housing to biofuels to carbon sequestration. Chamberlain said yes because logging contractors are inherently adaptable, and said his members will do what it takes to keep their employees working and their communities supported, even when it means reconfiguring equipment at their own cost to access a different market.

On the question of public support and social licence, the panel echoed a theme that ran through the conference. Bruce Anderson had told delegates the day before that the industry worries too much about social licence relative to the actual level of public support that exists for forestry. Arkle built on that while pointing to how much further there is to go — recalling a conversation with the head of the Swedish Forestry Association who visited BC to understand the differences between the two jurisdictions. The most significant difference identified, Arkle said, was not land use policy or watershed management but the fact that Swedish society broadly accepts and supports its forest industry in a way that BC’s does not yet. He said the momentum toward more collaborative thinking between industry, communities, and First Nations that he has seen develop over the last five years needs to be sustained and built upon.

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