Ben Parfitt

In August 2022, shortly after Canfor Corp. announced plans to … build a new high-tech sawmill in southern Alabama, local media reported that a suite of subsidies had sealed the deal to keep the company in the state. …Canfor’s investment is just one of dozens of U.S. acquisitions made in recent years by B.C.-headquartered lumber companies. …An investigation by The Tyee shows that just three of those companies — Canfor, Interfor and West Fraser — have plowed a combined nearly US$8.4 billion to buy, expand or build 59 mills in about a dozen U.S. states over the past 20 years… To unravel this story, The Tyee looked at B.C. company investments in the United States and at B.C.’s and Canada’s lumber export data over the course of nearly four decades — data that helps illuminate what brought the province’s forest industry to this critical juncture. …With duties mounting and a rapidly declining number of economically viable trees to cut down in B.C., it seems certain that growth for B.C. lumber companies lies south of the border, not here at home.