Paul Hoekstra
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has tapped former Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra to be his ambassador to Canada. Hoekstra served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 until 2011. He also previously served as Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands in the former president’s first administration. …Hoekstra is one of Trump’s first nominees for an ambassador position. The president-elect has also named nominees for ambassador roles to the United Nations, NATO and Israel. …Bruce Heyman, who had been Obama’s envoy to Canada from 2014 to 2017, said that the early naming shows the “importance of the relationship,” and pointed out that Hoekstra being from a border state gives him “direct knowledge and understanding of Canada.” “[This] should be good news for the Canada-U.S. relationship as they will have someone to work with to navigate the changes that are coming,” Heyman said.
Leaders in two industries critical to rural and northern B.C. — mining and forestry — are calling on the new ministers in those areas to improve the regulatory competitiveness of those industries. …Parmar had asked Premier David Eby to head his ministry, having served in it as a senior ministerial advisor before entering elected politics. …Linda Coady, COFI CEO said her organization looks forward to working with Minister Parmar to take what she called “urgent actions”. Coady added it is important that new minister focus on “strengthening the competitiveness” of the forestry sector to support critical rural, resource-based workers, businesses, and communities, advance reconciliation with First Nations and ensure healthy biodiversity and ecosystem outcomes. A focus on three priorities can help achieve these goals, she added. The first concerns stabilizing and increasing fibre supply. …The second concerns securing new agreements with First Nations. …The third concerns forest management.
QUÉBEC CITY — In the fall 2024 
BRUSSELS – The European Parliament sought on Thursday to water down a ban on the import of commodities such as beef and soy linked to deforestation, and backed a one year delay to the new rule, in a fresh push-back against the EU’s environmental agenda. The European Commission proposed a 12-month delay until December 2025 last month after complaints from a group of 20 EU countries, some companies and non-EU countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and the United States. However, it did not propose any changes to the substance of the law. …The parliament’s narrow vote to add a new ‘no risk’ category of countries with far lighter controls adds to uncertainty over the regulation as lawmakers will have to enter negotiations with EU governments. …Environmental groups said the vote was a terrible signal. Julia Christian at Fern, said the amendment would give EU forested countries a free pass and was “particularly egregious”.
OTTAWA – Canada’s annual inflation rate accelerated more than expected to 2% in October as gas prices fell less than the previous month, data showed on Tuesday, shrinking market bets for a bigger rate cut next month. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast the inflation rate would speed up to 1.9% from 1.6% in September. In August, the annual rate was 2%. It was the first pick-up in the annual inflation rate since May. The central bank forecasts consumer price inflation to be 2.5% this year and 2.2% next year. …This was the last inflation data to be released ahead of the Bank of Canada’s interest rate announcement on Dec. 11, and currency markets now see around a 28% chance of a 50 basis point rate cut, down from 37% before the CPI data release.
ONTARIO — Housing starts over the next few years will likely weaken and the already-dire supply shortage could get even worse, the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) is warning. A 
WASHINGTON – US single-family homebuilding tumbled in October as Hurricanes Helene and Milton depressed activity in the South and permits rose slightly, suggesting that a rebound was likely to be muted by higher mortgage rates. Single-family housing starts, which account for the bulk of homebuilding, plunged 6.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 970,000 units last month, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said on Tuesday. Data for September was revised higher to show homebuilding rising to a rate of 1.042 million units from the previously reported pace of 1.027 million units. Single-family starts dropped 10.2% in the South. Permits for future construction of single-family housing gained 0.5% to a rate of 968,000 units. …Mortgage rates initially fell as the Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates in September. They have, however, erased that decline on strong economic data and concerns that Trump’s policies could reignite inflation.
Jennifer Coskren, Fastmarkets’ director of wood products and timber, comments on the state of the US housing market and a look ahead to 2025. …Construction will ease about 5.5% this year, with the single-family component of our forecast still up 5% to just under one million units. While the September rate cuts by the Federal Reserve may not immediately boost new home construction, future cuts are likely to encourage side lined buyers to enter the market. We are expecting an improvement in construction in 2025. We anticipate a rebound in both single-family and multi-family starts, with a forecast of approximately 1.5 million units, of which 1.1 million of them are single-family. Both single-family and multi-family are forecast to be up around 11%.
The global market for mass timber is expected to grow to $3.7 billion by 2032 from $1.5 billion in 2020, according to 2023 report. This growth is being driven by the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific building construction industries. Hyperlocal approaches to creating a mass timber industry are already taking shape around the world. …In North America, 
VERNON, BC — Tolko Industries continues to dispute a $75,000 fine after a logging road it built is claimed to have caused a landslide. In question is a logging road constructed by Tolko Industries in 2011. It’s alleged the road ultimately led to a landslide in May 2017 resulting in the administrative fine. Following the issuance of the fine in 2022, Tolko launched an appeal. Most recently, legal wrangling between Tolko and the province is centring around a variety of documents, including slide inspections. The 
OREGON — The state’s in-house banker looked at the repayment promise that the Oregon Department of Forestry offered in exchange for a $60 million loan and said, “No.” …The ODF approached the treasury for a loan last month after a record-setting wildfire season left the agency with a stack of unpaid invoices. It is often the case that the department, which leads the state’s response to wildfires, hires contractors to do the work, then bills the federal agencies that own the land where many fires occur. This year’s fire season, which saw nearly 2 million acres burn, cost $133 million—more than twice the previous high and far more than the agency budgeted. …Treasury officials worried about the ODF’s reliance on future funding from the Legislature… as one legislature cannot obligate a subsequent legislature. …Forestry spokeswoman Joy Krawczyk says her agency will now ask lawmakers for the money instead.
The last decade’s economic, social, and environmental changes have affected the production, consumption, prices, and trade of forest products. 
Member states close the door to further tweaks to the new deforestation rules pushed by unusual right-wing majority in the European Parliament. EU diplomats have rejected European Parliament amendments to the Commission’s proposal to push back the entry into force of the bloc’s new deforestation rules by one year. Instead, member states insist on adhering to the original text. …Among the amendments, MEPs sought to introduce a new classification for countries posing “no risk” of deforestation, alongside the existing categories of low, standard, and high risk. However, in a meeting of EU ambassadors, member states reaffirmed they want to stick to the original proposal. “Opening the text would only generate legal uncertainty and huge time constraints,” the source continued. An interinstitutional meeting between MEPs and EU countries to hash out the divergences might take place as soon as tomorrow.
A recent wood pellet conference held in B.C. promoted biomass pellets as a green and climate-friendly energy solution. However, this rapidly expanding industry is not the climate saviour it has been made out to be. …These markets promise a climate solution by replacing coal, and so are incentivized globally by billions of dollars in subsidies. ..The story is that biomass pellets are made from wood waste, but in truth, a significant volume comes from whole trees, often from primary forests. …And while industry proponents claim that biomass is carbon-neutral, this only holds true if the trees are left to regrow fully — a process that can take centuries. In the meantime, burning of biomass accelerates carbon emissions at a time when we need immediate reductions. …B.C. should ban the export of wood pellets. International subsidies increase pressure on B.C.s forests and stand contrary to developing a real value-added industry here in B.C.
The battle to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius has been a rallying cry for climate action for nearly a decade. Now, with the planet almost certain to blow past the target, diplomats and campaigners at the COP29 summit have found themselves awkwardly clinging to a goal that no longer makes sense. The evidence has become harder and harder to ignore. This year will once again be the hottest on record as greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar and Earth will likely register an average reading of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. A study released this month using a new technique for measuring the rise in temperatures suggests the world was 