Bob Brash

Every Day… Yes, Trump’s tariffs are a serious problem for British Columbia’s forest sector. They add cost and uncertainty to an industry already fighting for its survival. However, if you think tariffs are the only issue, you’re delusional. Blaming our neighbors to the south is becoming a convenient excuse for avoiding a much more uncomfortable truth.

Many of the biggest problems confronting B.C. forestry were made in British Columbia.

For years, successive provincial governments have been told what is required to sustain a prosperous and competitive forest sector. The message has been remarkably consistent: provide greater certainty over the working land base and timber supply; create an efficient and predictable regulatory system; and tackle a cost structure that increasingly makes B.C. uncompetitive.

These aren’t new revelations. Government has heard them repeatedly. Yet the fundamentals remain largely unaddressed. Instead, we get announcements, consultations, new initiatives and political messaging. We debate tenure reform, redistribution of tenure, value-added, reconciliation, resilience, and the creation of a working forest. To varying extents, all valid and have merit.

But here is the uncomfortable question: What exactly are we creating if there is no longer an economically viable forest industry left to operate and the capacity to deliver it?

Tenure reform will not make an uneconomic mill economic. A new initiative will not attract investment if companies cannot obtain a predictable and certain timber supply. And political announcements will not persuade anyone to invest or reinvest hundreds of millions of dollars in B.C. if our costs and regulatory environment no longer support doing so.

Without fixing the fundamentals, much of what government is doing amounts to basically just rearranging the deck chairs while the ship continues to take on water.

Every day we are losing the sector more. Mills have curtailed production. Others have closed permanently. Workers have lost good-paying jobs, contractors have no work and leave the sector for good. Forest-dependent communities have lost economic activity and their needed tax base. Investment and innovation are being stifled. Once a mill closes, its equipment is sold and its skilled workforce disperses, we should not pretend that capacity can simply be switched back on when conditions improve. It won’t.

That should alarm every British Columbian.

Forestry has helped build this province. It supports communities, generates exports, creates family-supporting jobs and produces economic activity far beyond the mill gate. Yet government policy increasingly appears disconnected from the basic economics required to keep that industry operating. Recent works, including the Forest Sector Transformation Report and joint forest sector letter to the Premier, has reinforced what many in forestry have been saying for years: address the fundamentals, and do it urgently.

The problem is no longer a lack of studies. It is a lack of action. There is an old expression: the scorecard doesn’t lie.

So forget the press releases for a moment and look at B.C.’s forestry scorecard. Mill closures. Curtailments. Lost jobs. Declining production. Weak investment. Lost manufacturing capacity. Contractors leaving the sector. Communities wondering what comes next. After 50 years working in and around British Columbia’s forest sector, I have never seen a worse performance by our leaders.

Government can point to Trump, international markets or any number of external forces. Those pressures are real. But they cannot explain away the problems we have created ourselves. Nor can government continue to treat every criticism as something to be managed through another announcement, consultation or communications exercise. The forest sector does not need more spin.It needs competitive costs. It needs regulatory efficiency. It needs certainty over the land base and timber supply. And it needs a government prepared to recognize that these three fundamentals are inseparable.

There is still an opportunity to change course. But that window is closing quickly.

If government continues to substitute process and political messaging for substantive reform, the outcome is absolutely predictable: a smaller forest sector, fewer mills, fewer jobs, negligible reinvestment, and diminished communities across British Columbia.

Real actions to fix British Columbia forestry needs to start now in British Columbia. Otherwise, literally every day we all lose more.

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Bob Brash has worked for over 50 years with management roles in the private sector, first nations, government, and advocacy associations.