Curtis Cook
Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have always been the backbone of Canada’s economy, employing most of the country’s private-sector workforce (over 60 per cent as of last year) and generating much of Canada’s product, service, business process, and technological innovation across a spectrum of industries. The country’s forestry sector is no exception. SMEs are vital to sustainable forest management, job creation, and direct contributions to local and regional economies. …The recent Canadian Institute of Forestry 2025 National Conference in Thunder Bay featured a panel of dynamic entrepreneurs who are guiding their forest sector businesses to success despite the external challenges. True to the theme of the event, they are “finding opportunity in complexity.” These self-starters talked about their choices to enter the market and run their own companies and, at the same time, affirmed the importance of sector collaboration and partnerships as a path to growth and innovation.
Private woodlot owner Andrew Clark says this year is one of the toughest he’s seen in the six decades he’s worked in the woods. For him, sales are ‘maybe 50 per cent’ of what they were last year. “It is the lack of markets which are the result of the tremendous uncertainty that the industry is in now because of the actions of the American government,” he said. He feels some of the federal government’s new supports – announced this week – could help. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Wednesday a $500-million increase to the previously announced Softwood Lumber Development Program, which gives companies access to government-backed loans, totaling $1.2 billion. He also said Ottawa is working with railway companies to cut freight rates when transporting Canadian lumber across the country by 50 per cent. But Clark says the current situation – with the U.S. duties and tariffs amounting to 45 per cent – isn’t sustainable.
Pierre Poilievre says he’d succeed where Prime Minister Mark Carney has failed, and that New Brunswick’s softwood lumber sector would quickly get a “tariff-free” deal with the US if he was in charge. …Ottawa responded by releasing a financial aid package for the industry that includes up to $700 million in federal loans, “$500 million to supercharge product and market diversification. …Poilievre said that “one of my top priorities as prime minister will be to go down to Washington, get a deal on lumber, make the pitch that they will get more affordable homes if we can get tariff-free access to their market.” …MP Dominic LeBlanc sent a statement…. “In the coming weeks, we will take further urgent action, building on the significant support for the sector announced on August 5, 2025. In addition, Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency that will build affordable housing at scale, will prioritize the use of Canadian-made materials. [Access may require a Telegraph-Journal subscription]
The Nova Scotia Forestry Innovation Transition Trust is investing $1.8 million to assist private landowners and forest contractors in finding new markets for underutilized wood fibre and to support sustainable forestry management. According to a 
EAR FALLS, Ontario — Northerners know what it means to put in an honest day’s work. …But in Ear Falls, that northern way of life is under threat. In October, Interfor announced the indefinite closure of the Ear Falls sawmill. Over 160 jobs have vanished, and the community is left waiting—hoping that leaders in Ottawa and Toronto will step up, restore these jobs, and fight for the future of Ear Falls. But Ear Falls did not just stand by, they united. Workers, families, municipal leaders, Unifor, and MPP Sol Mamakwa stood shoulder to shoulder to demand action. …But the response from Premier Ford and Prime Minster Carney? Deafening silence. The indefinite closure of Ear Falls’ sawmill, and the silence from Conservative and Liberal governments lay bare the legacy of under-development, under-investment, and under-representation that holds Northerners back.
A decision to cut a tree-planting in the federal budget was met with disappointment by seedling producers. The Canadian Tree Nursery Association represents more than 95 per cent of Canada’s forest restoration seedling producers. The federal government decided to cut short the Two Billion Trees (2BT) Program, saving an estimated $200 million over four years. CTNA executive director Rob Keen said the decision would threaten the long-term environmental recovery of Canada’s forests and jeopardize the forest restoration sector. “I think the whole program was just starting to get some good momentum,” Keen said. …Keen said about 600 million trees are planted each year by the forestry industry. “So, really there was a very significant increase in overall tree planting in Canada,” he said. “And then, I guess in the budget … the government decided, ‘OK, we’re done.’ ”
The federal government says its housing agenda can “drive transformation” in the forestry sector as it continues to feel the squeeze of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war. That was among the messages relayed by Natural Resources Canada assistant deputy minister Glenn Hargrove to the House natural resources committee on Wednesday. Hargrove touted a $1.25 billion aid package for the sector unveiled by Prime Minister Mark Carney in August, noting $700 million of that, which will flow in loan guarantees through the Business Development Bank of Canada, will start to roll out this week. While there have been many pulp, paper, and sawmill closures across the country in recent years, Hargrove said the department sees a “huge opportunity” to “divert” Canadian products away from the U.S. and into the feds’ efforts to boost homebuilding. 
The judges at New Brunswick’s highest court are wrestling with how to award costs in the first part of a massive and complex litigation that has entangled the province’s biggest landowners. The New Brunswick Court of Appeal heard arguments from three timber firms that successfully argued their case in preliminary motions in a lower court in the Wolastoqey Nation’s big title claim for about 60% of the province’s territory. …Lawyers for J.D. Irving, Acadian Timber, and H.J. Crabbe and Sons argued that because the case is so complex and important for the rights of all private properties in the disputed territory, they deserve a bigger payout. …The case is expected to cost millions over the years. This is one of the reasons the Liberals say they decided the government should settle the dispute. …The judge said the court would make its decision known at a later date.
Kapuskasing Mayor Dave Plourde says after receiving good news on Friday, Kap Paper is slowly getting up and running again. Plourde said the facility was idle for about six weeks after the board ran out of funds to pay employees. Now the community is relieved that the federal and provincial governments have stepped up with close to $29 million to get around 300 people back on the payroll. Plourde said work is underway to plan for the operation’s future. “We started yesterday on the commencement of that,” he said. “It had already been in the works prior to that, but we’re having regular updates and we’re going to make sure that we have something in front of government very soon.” Plourde, who is also chair of the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities, said the support is appreciated, but overall, northern Ontario’s forestry sector requires urgent and coordinated action to ensure long-term stability.
THUNDER BAY – Ontario’s MPPs are officially back at Queen’s Park for a new sitting of the provincial legislature, after breaking for the summer and forestry was top of mind for the region’s leaders. Opposition member Sol Mamakwa, MPP for Kiiwetinoong, questioned the Ford government on how they plan to help 160 unionized workers affected by the shutdown at the sawmill in Ear Falls. “Our government is disappointed of the news coming from Ear Falls. Immediately following the announcement of the mill, the premier and I reached out to company officials and Mayor (Kevin) Kahoot offering support for the workers and the community,” Associate Minister of Forestry and Forest Products Kevin Holland said. …The tariff hike contributed to ongoing market challenges in the sector forcing Interforb to suspend operations at the sawmill indefinitely.
Friday was a good news, bad news day for Northern Ontario’s forest products sector. Folks in Kapukasing are breathing easier…the federal and provincial governments announced they’re contributing a total investment of $28.8 million to sustain the Kapuskasing paper mill for the short term. Broken down, the province is spending $16.8 million, while the feds are chipping in $12 million. …However, forestry’s shaky conditions have put another community in peril [with] Interfor indefinitely shutting down its Ear Falls sawmill. …Unifor is calling for immediate action involving all levels of government to develop an industrial strategy for the forestry sector… The Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association and the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities issued a joint statement that “urgent and coordinated action is required to ensure long-term stability across Northern Ontario’s forestry and resource sectors.” The best outcome, the group said, is for government to strike a long-term trade deal with the U.S. to ensure economic and employment stability.
MONTREAL, Quebec – Stella-Jones announced financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2025. Highlights include: Sales of $958 million, up 5% from Q3 2024; Operating income of $135 million, up 4% from Q3 2024; EBITDA of $171 million, or 17.8% margin, up 6% from Q3 2024; and Net Income of $88 million, up 10% from Q3, 2024. …“Stella-Jones achieved another solid performance in the third quarter, supported by volume improvements, robust margins, improved cash flow and a strong balance sheet,” said Eric Vachon, CEO. …The increase in pressure-treated wood sales resulted from an increase in utility poles and industrial products volumes and higher pricing for railway ties and residential lumber. This was partially offset by lower pricing for utility poles. Logs and lumber sales decreased by $14 million or 47%, mainly driven by lower logs activity.
EDMUNDSTON, New Brunswick – Acadian Timber reported financial and operating results1 for the three months ended September 27, 2025. Acadian generated sales of $23.0 million, compared to $26.0 million in the prior year period. …Operating costs and expenses decreased $2.0 million compared to the prior year period as a result of decreased timber sales volumes and timber services activity, partially offset by higher average operating costs and expenses per m
TORONTO — The Ontario government has launched a new working group to guide the implementation of the 
Researchers with the Nature Trust of New Brunswick are on the hunt for four different types of lichens and they’ve found one – in an unusual spot. The scaly fringe lichen, known scientifically as heterodermia squamulosa, was found between Alma and Riverside-Albert, east of Fundy National Park. “As far as I know, it’s the most eastern recorded occurrence of the species to date,” said Ilana Urquhart, a conservation coordinator with the Nature Trust. …Urquhart said lichens can be a good indicator of a healthy environment that can support a variety of species. “We might not directly see what the importance of them is, but they’re often found in areas that are really rich, that are biodiverse.” The biggest threat to lichens is habitat loss, according to Urquhart, which can be caused by logging and harvesting.%20(6).jpg)
OTTAWA — The Carney government will still pay to help plant a previously announced 52 million trees in New Brunswick, even though hardly any of them are in the ground and the program’s funding has been cancelled. The recent federal budget scrapped a program to plant two billion trees across the country by 2031 in order to find hundreds of millions of dollars in savings. It was a climate change initiative first announced by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the 2019 election campaign with $3.2 billion over 10 years earmarked to carry it out. New Brunswick was one of the last provinces to reach an agreement for its cut of that money. It didn’t sign on until March 2024. A few months after that, the feds and the New Brunswick government announced $71.6 million to plant more than 52 million trees on Crown lands across the province over the next eight years. [A Telegraph-Journal subscription is required for full access]
BANFF, Alberta – Because of this importance of whitebark pine, Parks Canada is working across the mountain national parks of Banff, Yoho, Kootenay, Jasper, Revelstoke-Glacier and Waterton Lakes to try to give endangered whitebark pine a fighting chance. The higher elevation trees, which can live to be 1,000 years old, are dying off at an alarming rate. Climate change, more than a century of wildfire suppression and mountain pine beetle are all playing a role, but the biggest threat comes from white pine blister rust. …One clear sign of infection is orange blisters on the bark. McLellan said less than one per cent of whitebark pine are naturally resistant to the rust. …Charlie McLellan said last summer about 6,500 rust-resistant saplings were planted in the Banff National Park field unit and in Kootenay National Park – made up of whitebark pine and limber pine, another species recommended to be listed as endangered.
The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. Or 20. That’s what I was told by the two retired foresters who put 2,000 one-year-old seedlings in the ground on my farm back in 2017. I had signed on with what was then called the 50 Million Tree program run by Forests Ontario, which subsidized plantings for private landowners. …the Forests Ontario program made tree planting easy. At 40 cents a stem, those trees cost me $800. While 2,000 trees seems like a lot, they cover just under one hectare. We got the seedlings in the ground a couple years before Doug Ford nixed the initiative in 2019. But then, Justin Trudeau created the 
The provincial government has awarded a pair of contracts to build firebreaks in areas of the Avalon Peninsula ravaged by this summer’s historic wildfire season — fires that forced hundreds of people from their homes and destroyed more than 200 structures. A firebreak is an intentionally created gap where burnable material, like vegetation and trees, are cleared in an effort to stop a fire from spreading further by removing flammable materials that could feed it. It was employed as a firefighting tactic against the Kingston, Martin Lake and Paddy’s Pond fires. According to a list of recently disclosed provincial government procurement contracts, Conception Bay South-based Platinum Construction Company Limited was awarded a $51,600 contract. Another contract, valued at $419,983.35, was awarded to Jerseyside-based Tier 1 Capital Corporation to build firebreaks in Burnt Point and Salmon Cove. Both contracts were awarded shortly after the PC party won a majority government on Oct. 14.
The Ministry of Natural Resources says nearly 6,000 square kilometres burned in Ontario this wildfire season, much more than last year and well above the province’s 10-year average. The ministry says 643 wildfires were recorded between April and October, with 597,654 hectares — or just over 5,976 square kilometres — burned. The province says 480 fires burned nearly 900 square kilometres in 2024, and the 10-year average for Ontario is 712 fires and about 2,100 square kilometres burned. Figures released by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre in August showed that Canada’s 2025 wildfire season was the second-worst on record. Those figures suggested the fires tore through 72,000 square kilometres, an area roughly the size of New Brunswick. Scientists say that climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has made Canada’s fire seasons longer and more intense.
TORONTO — As the 2025 fire season ends, Ontario’s fire crews, aviation services and support staff responded to 643 fires between April and October with 597,654 hectares burned. While the 2025 fire season began with an early active start, the coordinated efforts of frontline staff, municipalities, Indigenous communities and firefighting crews ensured a rapid response to protect people and communities from wildland fires. …With the rest of Canada also experiencing a demanding fire season, Ontario extended support to our partners, with over 400 fire personnel and six aircraft supporting firefighting in British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, as well as south of the border in Minnesota. As this year’s fire season ends, Ontario is now turning its focus to ensuring provincial fire crews are ready to respond next fire season. …The 2026 fire season will begin on April 1, 2026.
DRYDEN — Wildland fire crews were kept “very busy” throughout the 2025 forest fire season as Northwestern Ontario saw over 560,000 hectares go up in flames. “It would be fair to call the 2025 wildland fire season a very busy one in the Northwest,” said Chris Marchand, a fire information officer with the Ministry of Natural Resources’s regional fire management centre in Dryden. “Often in the spring, you hear us speak of the volatility of spring fire hazard conditions,” he continued. “And this year, from about the second week of May, it really provided a good demonstration of how a few weeks of dry weather combined with high winds and low humidity can really produce extreme fire behaviour in forests that haven’t greened up yet.” Those early conditions were the spark for a season that saw 560,234.9 hectares burned by 435 fires in the Northwest region alone. Comparatively, the Northwest’s relatively slow 2024 season saw 69,938.3 hectares burned in 218 fires.
HALIFAX – A documentary on BC’s Fairy Creek blockade is making waves in Nova Scotia. “Fairy Creek” covers a period of eight months in 2021, when thousands of activists blockaded logging roads leading to old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. …Now, it’s getting a Nova Scotia debut with screenings in Halifax, Tatamagouche, Inverness, Annapolis Royal and Wolfville. …Neal Livingston, a Nova Scotia filmmaker, says… “We don’t have a history of that (in Nova Scotia).” Livingston says the film is especially timely for Nova Scotians, as activists in Cape Breton say they have been targeted by recent legislation. …The province introduced an omnibus bill that would make blocking forest access roads illegal and come with a fine of up to $50,000 and/or six months in jail. This fine is a steep increase from the current $2,000 penalty.
Atlantic Canada’s wildfires are growing and a scientist at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) says the combination of climate change and regional forest management are making things worse. Anthony Taylor is a forestry expert at the UNB. He studies the impact of climate change and forest composition. “We should expect more weather like this into the future,” Taylor said. “That’s largely a consequence of inaction on climate change over the past 20 or 30 years.” Taylor said the weather and drought conditions in the Maritimes can be blamed on the climate change already baked into the system and people should expect more warming in coming decades. He said weather impacts wildfires more than any other variable but the next biggest factor is ignition. “More than 90 per cent of our fires that do occur, including this year, are from human ignition,” Taylor said. “Obviously we want to try to reduce and stop climate change but the next best thing after that is to be fire smart around the woods.”
TORONTO — Environmental experts are calling out the City of Toronto for not including a what they say is a key climate tool in its five-year climate action plan. The Toronto Environmental Alliance is highlighting the lack of building emission performance standards (BEPS) in the plan. BEPS are regulations that set emission limits for new and existing buildings. How-Sen Chong, TEA’s climate campaigner, such standards are one of the most significant policy tools as they would help the city cut emissions more efficiently. …Bryan Purcell, at the Atmospheric Fund, said, “Buildings are the largest source of GHG emissions in Toronto, accounting for over half of the emissions,” he said. “Reducing emissions from buildings is absolutely key to reaching the city’s climate targets.” …Chong “we’re hoping city council recognizes how important this is because so much of the city’s emissions are coming from the building sector,” he said.
A new law, Bill 27, could allow for large-scale geologic carbon storage to reduce the emissions from industrial processes like natural gas power generation, cement and steel-making, but critics say it’s not a silver bullet. …Ontario’s associate minister Sam Oosterhoff is impressed by Suncor Energy. The company… “cares deeply about reducing emissions.” And Oosterhoff believes they should do it through a process known as carbon capture and storage. That’s why Ontario should pass new legislation that would enable this process for high-emitting industries like cement and steel. …Bruce Hart, an adjunct professor in earth sciences at Western University, said he’s optimistic about Ontario’s carbon storage plans, given the types of rock available in the southwestern part of the province. …Aly Hyder Ali, at Environmental Defence, characterizes it as a tactic that allows emitters to expand fossil fuel production, not a meaningful solution to climate change.
Thunder Bay – For more than 100 years, the pulp and paper mill in Dryden has been the most important building in this small city in northwestern Ontario. It was the engine of the local economy, providing jobs for generations and connecting Dryden to a larger network of forest products that includes Thunder Bay and other communities in the area. But the same industrial complex also caused one of Canada’s worst environmental disasters. In the 1960s and 1970s, a chlor-alkali plant that was part of the mill dumped an estimated 9,000 to 10,000 kilograms (about 10 metric tons) of mercury into the English–Wabigoon River system. …People have lived with symptoms of mercury poisoning for generations, including Minamata disease. Commercial fishing was stopped, and guiding jobs disappeared. The main question is still painfully unanswered decades later: Who should pay to clean up the river, fix the land, and help the people who were hurt?
Quebec’s workers’ safety board (CNESST) concluded that driving a forestry vehicle that had no seat belt or complete door contributed to the death of a worker in Saint-Côme-Linière, in the Chaudière-Appalaches region. The forestry worker died in a workplace accident on Jan. 6 while reversing a vehicle known as a skidder, according to the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST). During the maneuver, the vehicle backed up onto the stump of a felled tree, causing vibrations that ejected the worker from the cab. The man was crushed by the front wheel of the skidder. In its report, the CNESST concluded that “operating a skidder that is not equipped with seat belts or full doors violates section 21 of the Regulation respecting occupational health and safety in forest development work.”