Patty Hajdu
The federal government will spend $228.8 million over the next three years to help Ontario workers in industries hit hard by US tariffs acquire new skills and adapt to the trade war disruption. The new Canada-Ontario Workforce Tariff Response will support workers and job seekers in the province’s softwood lumber, steel and automotive industries — areas still facing steep sectoral tariffs from the United States. The federal government says in a news release that workers in sectors affected indirectly by tariffs can also access the training and employment services on offer. Ottawa estimates 27,000 workers in Ontario will get training or other supports through the program. Federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu announced the funding on Tuesday alongside her Ontario counterpart David Piccini on Parliament Hill. On Monday, Hajdu also announced $94.5 million in spending over five years to improve data sharing on job opportunities in key sectors.
OTTAWA — The federal government is being accused of creating an uneven playing field in Canada’s shipping industry, and critics claim the Prime Minister’s Office is unwilling to rectify it. Later this spring, Ottawa is expected to launch a federal subsidy program to help reduce the cost of shipping lumber and steel between provinces by 50%. But the subsidies — promised by Carney back in November — will only go to rail companies. “We support this initiative to give a boost to those Canadian industries. But what we were asking was for parity because many destinations and commodities, only maritime transport can handle that,” said Etienne Duchesne, business development project manager at Desgagnés, a maritime shipping company based in Quebec. …In the House of Commons last week, Bloc Québécois MP Claude DeBellefeuille said the government was creating “unfair competition between rail transportation and marine transportation,” putting jobs and supply chains at risk.
EAR FALLS, Ontario — No news is not good news when it comes to the future of the sawmill in Ear Falls. Mayor of the community Kevin Kahoot says he’s supposed to talk with Interfor, the owner of the mill, this week. “We have regular conversations in the last few months…every couple of weeks,” says Kahoot. “It’s been kind of status quo recently. They keep pushing markets and tariffs and those kinds of things. But I don’t see a lot of movement maybe until springtime.” The sawmill shut down indefinitely back in October throwing 150 people out of work. [END]
New Brunswick royalty revenues have plummeted by $45 million. It’s a figure that has forestry royalties on track to come in at an historic low in the current fiscal year. And it was a decision to significantly cut royalty rates made quietly by the Holt government last July that’s behind it. That’s as the government suggests it’s a move that’s successfully sheltered the industry from curtailments and closures that are being felt across the country. …The province moved to overhaul timber royalty rates in 2022 after acknowledging its former policy of charging forestry companies a flat rate for wood cut in public forests had failed to take advantage of a two-year explosion in international lumber prices. A new system created under the former Higgs government allowed for rates to rise and fall with the prices of various wood-based commodities. “As forest product markets improve in the future, royalty rates will index upwards,” Herron said.
The Ontario Forest Industries Association is looking forward to welcoming you to our 83rd Annual Convention at One King West Hotel & Residence in Toronto, April 28 – 29, 2026. We are planning another high-impact event, and we want to ensure your visit is as smooth and enjoyable as possible. If you have not registered for the event, do so as soon as possible as limited spots remain. If you haven’t yet secured accommodations, we encourage you to do so as soon as possible. There are options at the One King West Hotel as well as several hotels within a short walking distance of One King West. The OFIA is a trade association representing Ontario’s sustainable forest industry and serves as a unified voice for forest products companies across the province — from timber producers to wood manufacturers — advocating on policy, market access, sustainability, and economic development issues. The Annual Convention is our flagship event, intended to bring together industry leaders, members, and stakeholders for networking, education, discussion, and celebration.
The Quebec government says it will hold a “mini-reform” of the province’s forest regime to provide relief for sawmills and other businesses pressured by cumulative U.S. tariffs. Jean-François Simard, Quebec’s minister of natural resources and forests, said that the changes aim to prevent plant closures and job losses which have surged in recent months. Simard said in a statement on Tuesday that 60,000 jobs are at risk. Quebec’s forestry and logging industry is the second largest in Canada in terms of employment, according to Statistics Canada. The forest regime dictates how Quebec’s forests are managed and harvested. The announcement comes days after a group of Indigenous land guardians and First Nations hereditary chiefs filed a lawsuit seeking formal recognition of their rights over a vast stretch of Quebec. Their legal challenge aims to curb industrial logging and ensure the protection of their traditional way of life.
The decision by the US Supreme Court to invalidate many of President Trump’s tariffs has been met with mixed reactions in Quebec, as the steel, aluminum and lumber sectors remain subject to US tariffs. Economy Minister Jean Boulet said, “its effects for Quebec seem limited,” noting that Quebec exports in accordance with CUSMA were already exempt. “American tariffs on lumber and other key sectors remain in place,” Boulet stressed. …Stakeholders from Quebec’s economic and union sectors pointed out that Friday’s ruling is far from putting an end to the trade war with our southern neighbors. …“While this decision is great news for free trade, its impact on Canada remains limited and we are not out of the woods yet,” said senior public policy analyst Gabriel Giguère in a statement. Moreover, the review of the USMCA planned for this year still looms over Canada-US relations.
The president of a logging company says anti-logging activists are fuelling a “social crisis” in the Mauricie region by sabotaging his company’s legal and government-authorized forestry projects and he called on the Quebec government to take action to protect workers and restore order. Antoine Langlois, president and founder of Forex Langlois Inc., contacted The Gazette this week to denounce what he and police believe was an intentionally set fire in Lac-aux-Sables last month that destroyed two machines owned by his company. …Sgt. Valérie Beauchamp of the Sûreté du Québec said police believe the fire was set intentionally sometime during the previous night…. Anonymous activists did take responsibility for sabotaging a forest in the same region on Jan. 26. In a statement posted on the Instagram account of a collective called Soulèvements du fleuve, an “anonymous group” said they had inserted metal spikes in trees in the Mékinac forest north of Ste-Thècle.
The City of Ottawa says program cuts at Algonquin College could make it harder to recruit workers. An internal city analysis reviewed roughly 30 programs the college was thinking of suspending and ultimately did cancel after a unanimous board of governors vote on Monday. The city found that the elimination of nine programs would affect its ability to hire staff in the future. The programs flagged include: Nursery Operator – Forestry Services, Public Works and Nursery Worker – Forestry Services, Public Works. …The forestry services branch within the city’s public works department relies on graduates from Algonquin’s horticultural industries program to fill nursery operator and nursery worker roles. It also depends on design foundations program graduates for its traffic services branch, which hires sign designers, fabricators and supervisors.
The head of an Indigenous-owned forestry company in New Brunswick says that provincial government statements about consultation with Indigenous communities over forestry policy are “hollow” without efforts to increase self-determination. Annie Simoneau, owner of L’Puk’Tuwis Forestry — which is based in Natoaganeg, also called Eel Ground First Nation — says that most small Indigenous communities currently lack the capacity to cut and manage their own timber. “Many are forced to rely on large forestry companies or urban-based contractors to do the harvesting for them. Those companies decide the methods — and too often that means clear-cutting, followed by herbicide spraying,” she told the NB Media Co-op. “That’s not self-determination,” she continued. “That’s dependency created by decades of policy that withheld equipment, training, and access from First Nations, then turned around and said, ‘You were consulted.’”
Nearly 40 Indigenous land guardians, alongside hereditary and traditional chiefs, have filed a lawsuit seeking formal recognition of their rights over a vast stretch of Quebec. Their legal challenge aims to curb industrial logging and ensure the protection of their traditional way of life. The application, filed in Quebec Superior Court last week, covers a territory spanning between the St. Lawrence River, the Saint-Maurice River valley and the forested areas of northern Mauricie, according to the document. The plaintiffs are specifically asking the court to declare all supply guarantees and intervention permits granted to forestry companies null and void. This legal move follows a summer of tensions marked by numerous blockades across the ancestral lands of several Indigenous nations. These actions were spearheaded by MAMU First Nation — a collective of land guardians from the Atikamekw and Innu nations — to protest a proposed overhaul of the province’s forestry regime.
QUEBEC — A group of First Nations chiefs has filed a lawsuit claiming Aboriginal title over three large tracts of land. They say it’s to have more control over forestry but the implications go much further. For months, First Nations land defenders have been disrupting the logging industry on their traditional lands. It started in protest of Bill 97, the controversial forestry reform bill that Quebec scrapped in September. Nitassinan hereditary chief Dave Petiquay says the group of hereditary chiefs — from the Haute-Mauricie and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean regions want the power to decide who can log on their lands and where. Lawyer Frédéric Bérard argues the Canadian constitution gives them that right. …The lawyer says, if successful, the suit would have repercussions for hereditary chiefs across the country and could impact future major infrastructure projects. The chiefs say they are willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Montreal — An activist group calling itself Les Robins des ruelles has followed its recent Robin Hood-style grocery store heists in Montreal with a claim to have sabotaged planned logging operations in a forest in the Mauricie region. …Translated as the Robins of the Alleyways, the group’s name is intended to evoke the legendary English folk hero who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. The group says on social media that although it delivered the booty to community kitchens and low-cost housing complexes, the grocery heists were political statements against the current economic order. …The latest such move by the group seems to be an action intended to discourage logging in some old-growth forests of Mékinac, in the Mauricie region. In a statement … the Robins say they have “armed the forest by driving steel bars through the trees on the site.” …The president of Forex Langlois Inc., said he is taking the sabotage claims “very seriously” 
Strategically planting trees along the northern edge of Canada’s boreal forest could remove multiple gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the end of the century, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Waterloo. The research, published in 