The BC Supreme Court’s decision in Cowichan v. Canada has drawn national attention. For the first time, a Canadian court has granted a declaration of Aboriginal title over privately owned lands. …But at the same time, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal in J.D. Irving v. Wolastoqey Nation ruled that the private lands held by timber companies were not subject to declarations of Aboriginal title. …We need to understand each ruling to understand the trajectory of Canadian law’s engagement with reconciliation. It’s clear that the rulings in fact point in just one direction, because Cowichan can be sustained only by rewriting the Supreme Court’s settled doctrine of Aboriginal title, while Wolastoqey, with one severable modification, remains faithful to it. Of the two decisions, only Wolastoqey offers an approach that is legally sound and clear in its application. …Wolastoqey demonstrates that proven wrongs can be addressed through compensation and negotiation without unsettling land titles or distorting the doctrine of Aboriginal title; Cowichan does the opposite. [to access the full story a Globe & Mail subscription is required]
TORONTO — Canadian businesses hit by targeted U.S. tariffs are struggling to respond as the trade war drags into its second year. …industries like metal production, lumber and automobiles continue to face steep duties more than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump upended the global status quo. Companies have cut staff, pulled back on production and pushed for government action as the heavy duties continue to shake the crucial and long-standing trade relationship with the U.S. …“Because of the way that these tariffs are imposed … five to six key manufacturing subsectors are really, really hurting versus the rest of the economy”, said Claire Fan, senior economist at RBC. …The softwood lumber industry was hit by harsh duties back in 2017, which Trump has since added to, resulting in production down over 25 per cent since the first round, she noted. The result is 22 mills closed since 2022 and another 50 with reduced operations…
Alberta’s government has tabled legislation to ease regulations and barriers to more easily enable the sale of some goods from other provinces. It’s part of a commitment Alberta made with its provincial and federal counterparts in signing an interprovincial free trade pact in November. That trade accord, which is supposed to take effect this summer, would see provinces recognize each other’s regulations for most consumer and capital products to avoid duplicative inspections and requirements. …Government officials told reporters before the bill was tabled that manufacturers in industries such as oil and gas, lumber and logging and fertilizer producers will likely see the most positive impact once the pact takes effect.
B.C.’s latest budget confirmed: One of the province’s foundational industries has lost more than half its public revenue base in a single economic cycle. Forestry revenues are projected at $521 million, down from $1.3 billion just a few years ago. …It is a structural failure. For decades, Canada built its forest economy around a single export market and a narrow set of commodity products. That strategy has now been exposed as dangerously fragile. …The issue is not a lack of fibre, skills, infrastructure or industrial heritage. …The issue is the absence of investment-grade data and intelligence that allow global firms to move quickly from site selection to financing and construction. …Canada already has a strong global investment attraction network through Invest in Canada and the trade commissioner service… What is missing is nationally consistent, standardized data sets on forest biomass availability, infrastructure capacity, workforce readiness, and permitting pathways that allow those teams to respond immediately when firms begin evaluating locations.
With just 13 days to go, anticipation is building for the 
Acadian Timber, one of Canada’s largest forest landowners, wants to close the performance gap between New Brunswick and its business in Maine, a goal its new interim CEO says is achievable despite labour and market challenges. …Malcolm Cockwell, who was named interim boss last month, said, “There are a lot of strong companies here that are investing in their facilities and running them pretty consistently even in challenging markets. Maine is a little bit more hit-and-miss with facilities not being as consistent with their operating schedule and a number of facilities dropping out over the last couple of years.” Acadian has just under 1 million hectares of land under management across New Brunswick and northeastern Maine, with approximately 313,000 hectares of freehold timberlands – privately owned forest land – in New Brunswick and 121,000 in Maine. …One way to make that happen in Maine is to improve Acadian Timber’s contractor base.
Lumber futures fell below $600 per thousand board feet as a slowdown in the North American housing market and rising financing costs outweighed persistent supply constraints. This downward pressure was driven by a 5.4% decline in building permits and a sharp 14.2% collapse in single-family housing starts, which signaled a cooling of construction activity as the spring season began. Additionally, 30-year fixed mortgage rates climbed to 6.22% following the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold interest rates steady, the market was further pressured by a sharp drop in crude oil prices that reduced the energy-heavy transport and production overheads. These factors effectively neutralized the marginal one-point gain in the NAHB Housing Market Index to 38, leaving 37% of builders reliant on deep price cuts to move a 2.4% increase in unsold inventory. Structural supply issues like the 45% combined duties on Canadian softwood and ongoing sawmill closures continue to provide a floor.
ONTARIO — Potential buyers across Ontario are poised to receive a significant tax discount on newly-built homes, but only for a limited time, as the Ford government looks to boost a sector struggling with a slump in sales. As part of his spring budget, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is expected to announce that the provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax will be removed for anyone buying a newly-constructed home, rewriting a policy the government introduced just months ago. …Ontario’s pledge to waive its portion of the HST came shortly after a similar announcement by the federal government — allowing first-time homebuyers to save up to $130,000 on a new home under $1 million, and lower rebates for homes costing up to $1.5 million. But the offer failed to ignite the market, forcing the government to take a second pass at the policy, and offer the discount to a wider swath of purchasers. 
A 17-storey mass timber-Passive House tower under construction in downtown Vancouver will help push forward clean, tall timber construction techniques, the company building the mixed-use structure at 981 Davie St. says. The builders, 
2025 was Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record. Canada’s air quality was worse than the United States in 2025, thanks to a record-breaking wildfire season last summer, according to a new report by IQAir. Canada doesn’t have the worst air quality in North America: That designation goes to Mexico, which landed at 50 on IQAir’s 2025 list of most polluted countries and regions. Wildfires pushed Canada to 117 in 2025, with the United States taking the 120th spot. These wildfires not only made Canada more polluted than the United States, but they were also large enough to affect air quality in Europe as smoke crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Between May 2025 and November 2025, Canada experienced its second-worst wildfire season ever, with over 6,000 wildfires and 8.3 million hectares burnt across the country. …Health Canada estimates that air pollution contributes to 15,300 premature deaths each year in Canada. 
The BC Wildfire Service (BCWS) will be jointly working on two fuel reduction measures near Lytton, one in Botanie Valley and the other near Highway 1 north of the town, and one in the Hat Creek Valley. The Hat Creek cultural burn will cover an area of up to 40 hectares, approximately 15 kilometres west of Cache Creek in the Upper Hat Creek Valley. The project, known as the Harry Lake Grasslands cultural burn, is in partnership with the Thompson Rivers Natural Resource District and Bonaparte First Nation. The burn is part of a multi-year project meant to introduce fire into the Upper Hat Creek Valley. Key goals of the burn include revitalization of cultural burning practices by St’uxwtéws (Bonaparte) First Nation; reintroduction of fire to a fire deficit ecosystem; and ecological maintenance and improvement of grasslands. It is also part of a research initiative being undertaken by the University of British Columbia into prescribed fire in the area.
Recovery operations are ongoing after 19 log bundles ended up on beaches in the PQB area after rough weather caused a log boom to break open at Mosaic Forest Management’s Northwest Bay waterfront facility two weekends ago. Mosaic said more than half of the bundles have been retrieved, but crews need favourable tides and calm weather to safely recover the remaining logs. “We’re hoping to have suitable conditions in the next few days to complete the recovery as quickly and safely as possible,” Mosaic told the PQB News on March 24. Mosaic notified the provincial regulator and is in direct contact with Rathtrevor Provincial Park representatives about its plans and timeline. The province has declared the area where the logs went astray as a “closed area in so far as the marine salvage of logs is concerned”. END
Wildfire fuel mitigation will remain a priority for the city, despite the B.C. government’s plans to stem the flow of FireSmart funding. At its March 23 meeting, city council received a presentation by Assistant Fire Chief Carmen Guidos, who was seeking direction on a couple of matters. One had to do with the Community Wildfire Resiliency Plan (CWRP) currently under development. The other was in regard of fuel mitigation work already planned for Coyote Park, South Canoe, and a small treatment area on Mt. Ida. The connecting thread prompting Guidos’ presentation was recent changes by the BC government to how it funds community FireSmart initiatives. The province introduced the FireSmart Community Funding and Supports (FSCFS) programs in 2018, providing approximately $175 million since then for communities to hire coordinators, conduct education campaigns and pay for fuel management efforts.
A new website and film showcasing wildfire mitigation efforts have been launched by the Logan Lake Community Forest. New branding has been launched alongside the release of a movie that delves into the community forest and its role in wildfire risk reduction and recreation. In a news release, Randy Spyksma, general manager for Logan Lake Community Forest, said the new, refreshed branding “better reflects who we are today and where we are going.” “It is a visual highlight of our commitment to responsible forest stewardship while supporting the long-term sustainability of our community.” …“Our film speaks to the heart of what we do as a community forest and allows us to share this work through storytelling,” Spyksma said.
A commentary by two forest ecologists who lead Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s Forest Conservation Program, and Raincoast’s executive director, who is a Southern Gulf Islands resident. The Islands Trust recently invited public input to help update its Trust Policy Statement, a document that guides how land-use decisions are made across the Trust Area in the Salish Sea. While the draft includes some overdue updates, it drifts from its mandate of environmental protection and fails to connect words in a policy document to decisions on the ground. To work properly, the Trust Policy Statement must clearly show how the Islands Trust will carry out its environmental protection mandate. The Islands Trust is a unique form of government. When it was established 50 years ago, its role was clear: to prevent unrestrained growth and development in the Trust Area of the Gulf Islands. The legislation recognized that the islands’ natural environment and rural character were fragile and irreplaceable.
Several log bundles ended up on beaches in the Parksville and Nanoose Bay area after rough weather caused a log boom to break open at Mosaic Forest Management’s Northwest Bay waterfront facility last weekend. … “Shifting high winds pushed the logs into shallow water before crews could safely reach them,” Mosaic told the PQB News. “We responded as soon as we were alerted early Sunday morning, recovering 10 of the 19 bundles.” Mosaic says salvage crews are standing by to recover the remaining nine bundles, but the current weather system has hampered access to the shallow beach areas where they came ashore.
For more than a decade scientists have documented how Antarctic sea ice has been retreating because of human-caused climate change. Now a team of Canadian and Chilean scientists is returning to Punta Arenas, Chile from a 14-day expedition on an icebreaker with data that will contribute to understanding how the continent’s ice, oceans and ecosystems are changing and how much glacier melt is accelerating. …Understanding climate change in Antarctica is important because it holds about 90 per cent of the world’s glacier ice, so what happens here will have major effects on the rest of the world, said B.C. scientist Thomas James. He’s the chief scientist of the expedition with the Geological Survey of Canada. …With this data, scientists can begin to understand how much human-caused global warming is changing the environment over time.
Drax, the U.K. company that operates the world’s largest wood-fired power plant, recently made headlines when it said that it will stop using trees cut down in Canada as part of its feedstock. But the move, which has been hailed by some in the environmental community as a huge milestone, won’t make an iota of difference on the ground in Canada — or anywhere else for that matter. That’s because Drax is both a major consumer and producer of wood pellets, which are burned like coal, natural gas and oil in thermal power plants around the world to produce electricity. …The company will shift to sourcing those pellets from elsewhere. …One consequential but almost completely ignored aspect of the Drax story is that “switching” from coal to wood hasn’t made so much as a dent in global demand for coal — or greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, worldwide use of both wood and coal continues to rise.
BC has quietly eliminated its Climate Action Secretariat, the long-running agency that produced and implemented climate policy across government ministries. In an email to staff, Peter Pokorny, deputy minister of energy and climate solutions, said that “to align with key priorities” some secretariat staff would move to new subject matter, including supporting LNG, pipelines and gas fracking. …Other staff will be moved to a newly formed “climate solutions” division, which will also bring in staff from the now-folded “energy decarbonization division.” The new division will focus on some of the secretariat’s previous responsibilities, including emissions accounting and efforts to reduce emissions in sectors like buildings, transportation and industry. …Stand.earth, described the move as part of the “slow-motion death” of the province’s climate plan, CleanBC. …The Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions pushed back on the idea that it had eliminated the secretariat, instead referring to the cuts as a “reconfiguration.”
A European energy giant Octopus Energy Generation Ltd. will spend as much as $6 billion to build and operate a renewable energy park in Nova Scotia. Octopus plans to use biomass …from forest-based industries to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) it will sell to European customers. The processing for Nova Sustainable Fuels, as the Canadian subsidiary is known, will be done at a to-be-constructed renewable energy park in Goldboro, N.S. The site, estimated to cost between $4 billion and $6 billion, is expected to take about three years to build and have a 50-year lifespan. …With airlines seeking to decarbonize, the World Economic Forum reported in 2025 that the global demand for SAF is projected to grow exponentially, reaching 17 million tonnes annually by 2030. That represents four to five per cent of total jet fuel consumption. Parsons said the foundation of the project is based on supplying SAF to European markets.