THUNDER BAY, Ont. — Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association leaders are in Ottawa as the 2026 Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference opens Sunday, Aug. 16, with highways, housing, forestry, workforce shortages and critical minerals among the region’s major advocacy priorities. …NOMA plans to advocate for immigration programs and workforce policies designed to better address labour shortages in Northwestern Ontario. For communities attempting to expand mining, forestry, construction, health care, municipal services and other industries, the ability to attract and retain workers is increasingly tied to economic growth. …NOMA will also put the forest sector before government decision-makers, arguing for measures that maintain the competitiveness of Northwestern Ontario producers while responding to international trade pressures. Forestry remains particularly important outside Thunder Bay, where mills and forestry operations can be among a community’s largest private-sector employers and contributors to the municipal tax base.
OTTAWA — Canada’s forest-products industry is urging the federal government to develop a forestry-specific approach to rail transportation costs and reliability, arguing that the sector faces different competitive pressures than steel and other heavy industries. …For Northwestern Ontario the issue is particularly significant. Mills are often located hundreds of kilometres from major markets, ports and border crossings, making reliable and competitively priced rail service critical to maintaining production and jobs. …According to FPAC, the average shipment of Canadian forest products travels roughly 1,200 kilometres over land…. amount to between $2 billion and $3 billion annually. For mills across Northwestern Ontario, transportation reliability can influence inventory levels, production schedules, export competitiveness and ultimately employment. …For Northwestern Ontario, the rail-cost debate comes at a time when the forest sector is already dealing with pressures from international trade, changing lumber markets, energy and labour costs and the need for continued investment in mills and equipment.
THUNDER BAY — Northern Ontario businesses are facing another period of trade uncertainty as United States President Donald Trump prepares to impose an additional 50 per cent tariff on a wide range of Canadian products. …For Northern Ontario, the greatest immediate concern is likely to be forestry, wood and paper products and smaller manufacturers selling into the U.S. market. …FedNor says 96% of Ontario’s forestry exports go to the United States. It also identifies 10 Northern Ontario communities where at least 20 per cent of community income is connected to forestry. Ontario’s forest sector supported more than 128,000 direct and indirect jobs provincewide in 2024. …The tariff schedules are product-specific and some forest products are already covered by other U.S. trade measures. …For Northern Ontario sawmills, paper producers and secondary wood manufacturers, the risk comes from both the tariff itself and the uncertainty surrounding it.
SAULT STE. MARIE — The Ontario government is partnering with the Government of Canada to invest more than $7.2 million through the Canada-Ontario Workforce Tariff Response to help protect workers in the North, strengthen critical industries and build a more competitive and resilient economy in the face of global economic uncertainty. This investment will help more than 500 workers across northern Ontario upgrade their skills, transition into in-demand careers and ensure local employers have the skilled workforce they need to grow and succeed. “Through these investments, we’re helping workers transition into good-paying careers, supporting employers facing economic pressures and strengthening the industries that will drive Ontario’s future prosperity,” said David Piccini, Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. Ontario will deliver the funding through Skills Advance Ontario, which partners with employers and training providers to help workers transition into the sectors that are driving economic growth and building the province’s long-term competitiveness. 
BELLEVILLE, Ontario — The government is investing more than $3.3 million in 
MONTREAL, Quebec – Stella-Jones announced financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2026. …Sales for the second quarter of 2026 were $1,042 million, up eight million dollars, versus sales of $1,034 million for the second quarter of last year. Excluding the $29 million contribution from the acquisition of Brooks Manufacturing, pressure-treated wood sales decreased by $13 million, or 1%. …Adjusted EBITDA of $167 million, or 16.0% margin compared to $189 million, or 18.3% margin in Q2, 2025. Net income was $61 million compared to $106 million in Q2. …This performance reflected higher wood utility poles sales, largely offset by the lower market price of lumber for residential lumber and lower volumes in railway ties. Logs and lumber sales declined by eight million dollars, or 31%, primarily due to a reduction in logs trading activity. …Eric Vachon, President and CEO of Stella-Jones said “We expect margin performance to improve in the second half of the year.”
Canada’s wood products manufacturers are on the operating table, bleeding out. …The United States has slapped tariffs on foreign steel, aluminum, and automobiles — but many Canadians don’t know the Section 232 and 338 tariffs also target wood products, like furniture and kitchen cabinets. …Those US tariffs have created a two-headed monster. On one side, wood products manufacturers like us have lost meaningful access to our largest export market. On the other, every other country in the world is now scrambling to find alternative buyers for product they can no longer sell into the United States. They found one: Canada. Today, Canada’s warehouses are bursting with cheap imported wood products. …Local manufacturers are prepared to compete globally, but not on an impossibly imbalanced playing field. …The solution is not a subsidy, or more loan programs. We need a short-term provisional tariff now, to bridge the gap between launching an investigation and finding an appropriate longer-term solution.
Forest fires are ravaging the country again this summer. My heart goes out to those who have lost family members, homes, their way of life, and pets. The dangers first responders face and the health issues caused by smoke are scary. …The areas hardest hit by the forest fires are pristine areas where environmentalists stand fast on protecting the area in its natural state. Tall conifer trees with dry needles and dead branches on the ground provide fuel and allow fire to jump from treetop to treetop. If lumber companies were allowed to clear-cut for miles around towns and fast-growing deciduous trees were allowed to grow and be supported, a forest would return in 5-10 years with trees that greatly reduce the chance of fire spread.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Canada is failing to properly manage its forests, and that the cost of wildfire smoke drifting south should be added to tariffs on Canadian goods, has prompted renewed questions about whether more could be done to prevent the massive blazes that have blanketed parts of North America with smoke. But wildfire experts say the answer is far more complicated. “The short answer is there’s nothing that Canada can do about these major wildfires that are causing wildfire smoke to travel thousands of kilometres,” said Anabela Bonada, managing director of climate science at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo. …“The No. 1 thing is all of us reducing our emissions, and that goes for the U.S. as well,” Bonada said. “But we are looking at smoky summers ahead, so we need to do everything possible to protect ourselves and people that live in our home.”
TORONTO — On World Nature Conservation Day, a new report published by Ontario Nature demonstrates how Bill 5’s Species Conservation Act (SCA), which repealed the Endangered Species Act (ESA), creates critical protection gaps for 106 migratory birds, aquatic species and species of Special Concern. The report – Bridging the Gap: Assessing Recent Changes to Species at Risk Protections in Ontario – shows that the ESA provided an effective, though imperfect, framework for species conservation and recovery. The loss of this framework is a symptom of a much broader trend in weakened environmental protections across the province and beyond, where the most vulnerable species and habitats are seen as “red tape”. This pattern exacerbates the ongoing biodiversity crisis, which will ultimately undermine the economic and social resilience of Ontario, in addition to further imperiling our precious natural world.
Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park was nearly leveled in a 2025 storm. Now thousands of new trees have been planted to build a new forest for the future …In 2025, a powerful storm crashed down on Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park outside North Bay, Ont., dropping trees on tents, trailers and an environmental education centre. Since then, park staff and Forests Canada have been working to replant some of the trees that were lost and clean up the park to allow visitors in again this season. Extreme weather is becoming more common and severe as the climate warms. At the same time, global warming means the type of trees that will thrive in northern environments like Samuel de Champlain is also changing, and the restoration work has to account for that.
It was more than a decade ago that the Ontario government started to worry about its wildland firefighting program. Back in 2016, a 
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The planet’s warming had a strong influence on destructive wildfires in Canada that have raged across Ontario and the Northwest Territories since late June, making the extreme fire weather that fueled them at least twice as likely, according to 
The wildfire situation in northwestern Ontario has drawn growing global attention. There have been extraordinary stories of close calls and narrow escapes from the rapidly advancing fires. Complaints are coming (ironically) from the United States over the impacts of the resulting fire smoke on American cities. In the short term, attention is rightly focused on the immediate responses to the fires. …At the same time, the fires need to be viewed in a longer-term context. Increased incidences of large-scale forest fires, particularly in the boreal region stretching across Canada from Labrador to the Yukon, have been a predicted impact of climate change in Canada for more than three decades. …The province needs to both adapt to the reality of a changing climate and its consequences and develop a serious strategy for not making the problem worse. So far, Ontario is failing on both fronts.
Hydro-Québec has reached an agreement with the Atikamekw community of Opitciwan and Société en commandite Onimiskiw Opitciwan (SCOO) to build a 4.8MW forest biomass cogeneration plant that will replace the community’s diesel-fired power generation, with commercial operation expected to begin this month. Under the 25-year agreement … the utility will also fund the acquisition and installation of a dryer at the Opitciwan sawmill, majority-owned by the Conseil des Atikamekw d’Opitciwan (CAO). The project is estimated to cost C$60.2 million (around $45 million), with funding contributions from the Quebec provincial and Canadian federal governments alongside investment from CAO and SCOO. The Atikamekw are a First Nations people numbering around 8,000 across several communities in northern Quebec; Opitciwan itself is home to close to 3,000 residents. …”Replacing the current diesel plant with one that’s powered by forest biomass from the sawmill is a huge step forward,” said Denis Clary, President of SCOO.
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Ontario Forest Fires said there were five new wildland fires confirmed in the northeast region in its latest update issued Sunday evening. The organization also said that efforts to contain one of the fires — Cochrane 32 — were hampered by a drone flying illegally in the area. “A drone flying over Cochrane 32 tonight has grounded all firefighting aircraft in the area and delayed suppression operations,” Ontario Forest Fires said in its update. Regulations prohibit “aircraft, including drones, from the airspace over an active forest fire within 5 nautical miles and up to an altitude of 3,000 feet.” …The five new fires include Cochrane 32, which measures 2.8 hectares and is located two kilometres northwest of Harty.
