The summer of 2023 will go down as the year of smoke in North America, and while it would be easy to panic and predict the end of days, history teaches that this could easily be a one-off year, followed by a cool and rainy summer. …But there is no denying that 2023 will go down as the worst year for forest fires in recorded Canadian history. What was particularly noteworthy was how widespread it was, with nearly every province within the boreal forest scrambling to fight fires. It truly was a national event—and not a good one. It would be easy to blame Climate Change for this dire situation, and there is no doubt that it is causing more extreme weather patterns like long periods of drought. This contributed to the size of the fires that burned in 2023.
But we can do a better job of forest management to potentially minimize the size and spread of wildfires by creating more resilient forests. We’ve known about these forest management practices for decades, but have resisted making the change because it is more economical and easier to plant monocultures of same-age trees. Now we see the consequences, particularly in areas that naturally regenerate as mixedwood forests or conifer stands that regenerate with mixed species and ages. …We know these practices work to mitigate forest fires because thousands of years of forest management by Nature proves it. Fire is nothing new in the fire-origin boreal forest—in fact, it’s natural. What is new are changes to the natural forest succession that we have adopted in current reforestation practices, including fire suppression on a massive scale, and now we are starting to realize the consequences of this interference. It’s time for change if we don’t want gaps in the forest resource available to harvest in future
From timber long houses in Europe to temples in Asia, wood has been a primary construction material in buildings since the Stone Age, with some still standing more than a thousand years later. Today, modern technology and engineering is turning wood into a “new” building material, mass timber, which is set to transform the North American lumber industry. …For decades, Europe has been at the forefront of this revolution, but growing momentum in the still-nascent North American market is fostering an environment ripe for commercial opportunities. …The number of North American mass timber plants has grown to 22 from just 4 in 2016, and that number could more than double by 2027… and there are many opportunities to participate in different parts of the business. These include fabrication of and design services for the various components and connections, all the way to working with architects and engineers on fully integrated design and supply solutions.
This presents the opportunity for both the lumber and pulp industries to co-operate on land management, sharing in the carbon offset credit revenue to help pay for the establishment of the plantation, while benefiting from additional fibre sources over a shorter time span. …There is plenty of room in Canada for both conventional crop farming and tree farming. The key is to plan strategically and aim, for example, at productive land parcels that are difficult to farm but could still generate income through the sale of carbon offset credits. Parcels as small as one hectare could still be monetized into a valuable tree farm. …If Canada wants to achieve its GHG reduction targets, it’s going to have to do a lot more than just pump carbon dioxide back into the ground… and making tree farming affordable goes a long way toward building a natural climate change solution.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the misguided expectations that come from using the number of jobs per thousand cubic metres of timber harvested to compare British Columbia’s forest sector to other jurisdictions. Critics have attempted to associate BC’s comparatively low generation of jobs per thousand cubic metres harvested to issues such as log exports, mechanization, forest management practices and minimal value-added processing. …BC is often compared to Quebec and Ontario, which have much higher jobs per thousand cubic metres harvested. …Jobs per thousand cubic metres of timber harvested is a relative metric useful for comparison to other regions, but it does not tell the behind-the-scenes story. 
Over the last few months, the BC forest sector has increasingly been the beneficiary of broad proclamations by many who work outside of the sector about an upcoming “paradigm shift” and “transformative future” in the management of BC’s forests. For some, these are apparently new and wise revelations worthy of our everlasting gratitude. The reality is that many of us have been around long enough to know that for decades, these terms have been bandied around repeatedly when each generation believes they have found the grand solution to the forestry issues of the day. These many decades have also seen the ebb and flow of the lobbying influence each faction in the debates can harness for their agendas dependent upon the government’s leanings in any particular election cycle. Today, many would say the pendulum is weighted towards environmental influences, while others will argue the industry’s influences were dominant in previous times. There is probably merit on both sides of the argument.
There are many times when I’ve been frustrated by the headlines sensationalizing protests about forest management in BC. The relentlessness of the attacks on our forest sector becomes, right or wrong, numbing. …I’m not talking about the legal and passionate protests and dialogue about the future of forest management in BC. This is about those that flout the law, discourage real discussion, discourage democracy, and have a new brand of colonialism. One protest group dumped a pile of manure at the front door of Premier Horgan’s constituency office. Wow, that is really mature. Next, Minister Conroy’s home phone number was published online and both she and her family members received threatening messages. Wow, what kind of person does that?
