The opening panel at the 2026 SFI Annual Conference in Montréal brought three senior executives to the stage under the moderation of outgoing SFI CEO Kathy Abusow. The conversation covered trade policy and tariffs, forest sector transformation, investment, and the role of certification in a period of structural change. Derek Nighbor is President and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada. Pete Madden is President and CEO of the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities. Lenny Joe is CEO of the BC First Nations Forestry Council. Abusow opened by noting that sector decline predates the current trade dispute, placing the scale of the problem on the table before the first question: 43 pulp and paper mill closures in the US — a figure she attributed to Madden — with 20 more expected, and 27 mill closures in Canada alongside 22 permanent sawmill shutdowns.
Abusow then turned to tariffs, asking Joe how trade policy and softwood lumber disputes uniquely affect First Nations. Joe said most First Nations operate as market loggers, with fibre moving through relationships with major licensees — meaning tariff-driven slowdowns hit rural communities, where most First Nations are located, directly and quickly. Nighbor noted that Canadian lumber volumes to the US dropped roughly 12% in 2025, with about eight percentage points of that loss being filled by European supply. He said he did not think it needed to be this way, and that the opportunity lies in growing the pie for the continent. Madden pointed to unintended consequences in rural communities, where mills trying to reinvest in their own infrastructure are finding imported machinery too expensive under the new tariff environment, causing capital projects to stall.