Canada’s government has moved quickly to protect and strengthen the sectors most affected by U.S. tariffs – introducing new measures to help workers gain new skills, support businesses as they modernise and diversify, and boost domestic demand for Canadian goods. Building on previously announced measures to help transform the Canadian steel and softwood lumber industries, the following new initiatives were announced:
- Further limit foreign steel imports
- Make it easier to build with Canadian steel and Canadian lumber
- Canada will work with railway companies to cut freight rates for transporting Canadian steel and lumber interprovincially by 50%.
- To maximise the use of Canadian softwood lumber in housing, Build Canada Homes will prioritise shovel-ready, multi-year projects.
- Canada will implement our Buy Canadian Policy later this year, which requires that all contracts worth over $25 million prioritise Canadian materials – including steel and lumber.
- Increase protections for Canadian steel and lumber workers and businesses
- Canada will earmark more than $100 million to provide support in all sectors with an active Work-Sharing agreement.
- Canada will provide an additional $500 million to the BDC Softwood Lumber Guarantee Program.
- For softwood lumber firms facing liquidity pressures, Canada will earmark $500 million under the Large Enterprise Tariff Loan facility.
- Canada will launch a Canadian Forest Sector Transformation Task Force.
Help is on the way for Canadian steel producers and those in softwood lumber affected by the ongoing trade dispute with the United States. Multiple senior government sources confirmed that Prime Minister Mark Carney will announce measures on Wednesday to protect the steel industry, which has been hit with 50 per cent tariffs by the Trump administration. The measures include cutting limits to the amount of steel that can be imported into the country from nations that do not have a free trade agreement with Canada. …The Carney government will also increase the total money available to struggling softwood lumber companies to $1.2 billion. It’s a $500-million increase from the previously announced Softwood Lumber Development Program, which gives companies access to government-backed loans. …Trade talks between the two countries have been put on pause for the last month.
WASHINGTON — American industries ranging from whiskey makers and Wisconsin dairy producers to steel and automobile associations are weighing in on the future of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade. The continental trade pact, known as CUSMA, is up for mandatory review next year and the Office of the United States Trade Representative has been collecting input on the changes it should consider. CUSMA has been rattled by U.S. President Trump’s massive tariff agenda and many of the submissions urged the administration to restore duty-free trade. The Can Manufacturers Institute wrote to the Trump administration saying steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada are making their products more expensive and causing prices in grocery stores to increase. …The United States Steel Corporation said tariffs on that metal should remain indefinitely. The submissions provide insight into areas that could become irritants in looming negotiations on the critical trilateral trade pact.
President Donald Trump has yet to follow through on his threat to impose an additional 10 percent tariff on Canadian imports, four weeks after he halted “all trade negotiations” over an anti-tariff ad the province of Ontario ran. Trump’s announcement had Canadian exporters preparing for a worst-case scenario: a sweeping levy layered on top of existing double-digit duties. …The White House did not say whether it still plans to impose the tariff when asked for comment. But a separate US official suggested the Trump administration had opted to hold off on additional duties — which would have sent tariffs on Canadian goods to 45% — and instead continue to dangle the threat as the two sides gear up for future talks. “The Canadians know what’s on the table,” said the official. Volpe said a personal intervention by Carney in Asia last month may have helped matters, too.
Ottawa threw the beleaguered softwood lumber industry a bone. …The new measures include $500 million in new loan guarantees for softwood lumber companies. “Loans are only good if i can sell my prioduct and pay for those loans,” said Brian Menzies, at the Independent Wood Processors Association of BC. “At 45%, I can t sell my product into the United States.” Other steps announced include cutting freight rates. …The measures are window dressing – say some – when compared to the impact of the steel industry supports. “I’m afraid we’ve come to the point that ‘Sophies choice’ is happening and softwood lumber is the child who’s going to be left behind,” said Menzies. It’s a concern shared at Leslie Forest Products, in Delta where James Sanghera said the measures won’t make a difference. “Most of the wood we’re sending down to the States is going on truck.”
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 audience of dedicated urbanists at Vancouver’s Robson Square Theatre was startled earlier this year when the first speaker at a debate about mass timber—which B.C. has been promoting vigorously—said it isn’t the for-sure climate-change silver bullet that everyone likes to think it is. Adam Rysanek, a UBC professor of environmental systems who specializes in energy efficiency, poked hard at the assumption that, because everyone thinks of mass timber as just wood—a plant! that comes out of the ground!—it must be natural and environmentally friendly and surely better than concrete. But Rysanek kept making the point at the Urbanarium debate that those ideas are not fully proven. A study he cited, which aimed to factor in all the uncertainties of carbon emissions in different types of building materials, found there is not a clear answer yet about the differences between mass timber and concrete.
B.C. has invited stakeholders, experts, Indigenous partners and government representatives from throughout the country to a wildfire symposium in Vancouver on Dec. 5, 2025. The focus will be the 2025 wildfire season, wildfire technology, active forest management and national readiness for future wildfires. The symposium includes advancing discussions on a national leadership strategy and stronger collaboration that will shape the framework of wildfire resiliency in Canada. Enhancing a national framework for wildfire resilience, including the challenges and opportunities people and communities are facing, is one intended outcome for the upcoming symposium on wildfires to be hosted in B.C. After the second-worst wildfire season nationally, B.C. is leading the symposium to bring together national and international experts, provincial, federal and territorial governments, as well as key industry and Indigenous partners, with the goal of sharing best practices and considering mitigation and preparation steps for 2026.
A proactive new tool that can help preserve old forests in British Columbia has been developed by University of Alberta researchers. A new study gives crucial insight into where to focus conservation measures, by identifying areas of old-growth forest in areas predicted to be stable in the face of climate change. The approach shifts the focus toward what can still be protected, says Nick Pochailo, who led the study…. “Old-growth forests located in areas of potential climatic stability offer exceptional long-term conservation value. By identifying these places, land managers can prioritize and plan conservation efforts more effectively.” …old-growth forests account for about 25 per cent of BC’s forested areas. They’ve shrunk from 25 million hectares to about half that due to logging, wildfires, and pests like the mountain pine beetle… computer models predict how these ecosystems might shift by the 2050s, then mapped the changes to geographically pinpoint areas most likely to survive. 
A First Nation in north-central B.C. says it is banning the use of herbicides across all of its territory, which includes Prince George and the Robson Valley. The Lheidli T’enneh First Nation says the ban is being put into place because of the negative impacts herbicides, and glyphosate in particular, have had on the environment and wildlife for which they are stewards. “It is our duty to disallow toxic chemicals in our territory that reduce biodiversity and have negative impacts on our members’ health, wellbeing and the environment where we exercise our living rights and traditions,” Lheidli T’enneh Elected Chief Dolleen Logan said in a statement. She also says the nation expects both government and private industry workers operating in the region to adhere to the ban. It was not immediately clear if the ban would also apply to private and municipal property. More details coming Tuesday morning.
The new allowable annual cut (AAC) for Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 49 near Vernon has been chopped. The cut, which is the maximum amount of timber that can be harvested each year, is now 150,500 cubic metres, and takes effect immediately. That’s a 26.2% reduction from the previous AAC. “That decision reflects a return to sustainable harvest levels following wildfire impacts in 2021 and 2023,” said the 
For more than 80 years, the annual 
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The return of cold and snow at the close of the year typically signal the end of the wildfire season. …Zombie fires, sometimes betrayed by a plume of steam emerging from the bubbling ground in the frozen forest, were once a rare occurrence in the boreal regions that stretch across the far north through Siberia, Canada and Alaska. But in a rapidly heating world, they are becoming increasingly common. The overwintering burns are small – and often hard to detect – but they are transforming fires into multi-year events. …“It is a massive problem,” says Lori Daniels, a professor at the University of BC. Current estimates show that only about 15% of the northern hemisphere is underlain by permafrost, yet these frozen soils contain roughly twice as much carbon than is now in the atmosphere. By burning slowly and at a lower temperature, they release vastly more particulate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions than flaming fires.%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]
BELÉM, Brazil
WorkSafeBC is holding a virtual public hearing on