The US Supreme Court ruled (6-3) that President Trump’s emergency tariffs are illegal, declines to comment on possible refunds. In other Business news: the US Lumber Coalition added subsidy allegations to its Canadian lumber complaint; Coastal Forest Products is accused of evading US trade remedy laws; Western Forest Products and Tla’amin Nation agree on TFL 39 Block 1 sale; and Unifor seeks meeting with Kruger over Corner Brook mill. Meanwhile: Acadian Timber appoints Malcolm Cockwell CEO; Clearwater Paper reports Q4 net income; and Canfor supports Whitecourt, Alberta’s new event centre.
In Forestry news: First Nations chiefs file lawsuit over forest land title in Quebec; and Oregon and California railroad lands are set to allow more logging. Meanwhile: the US Forest Service announced $95 million for wood innovations; Massachusetts considers staircase code change; a PEFC webinar on agroforestry and urban forestry; SFI training programs across the US; and the latest news from WorkSafeBC, BC Wood, and the Softwood Lumber Board.
Finally, BC raw log exports—an emotionally charged phrase that obscures value and jobs.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog News Editor
OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada will help decide the appropriate means of reviewing a company’s complaint about the service provided by a railway. In November 2023, the Canadian Transportation Agency ruled that Canadian National Railway Co. failed to meet the level of service it owed to Alberta Pacific Forest Industries Inc. The agency is a federal regulator and quasi-judicial tribunal and, under section 41 of the Canadian Transportation Act, its decisions may be appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal on questions of law or jurisdiction. CN wanted to contest factual findings so it pursued an appeal under a provision of the Federal Courts Act, not under section 41.
The US Lumber Coalition has expanded its list of complaints against Canadian softwood producers. The group has presented nine “new subsidy allegations,” claiming that Canadian producers benefit from federal government programs, including one that offers refundable tax credits for clean technology such as solar power. …The Commerce Department is investigating the nine new allegations put forward by the group. Canada has repeatedly rejected American arguments that Canadian producers benefit from subsidies and also denies dumping. …One of the group’s complaints targets a federal program in Canada, open to eligible forestry companies, that provides refundable tax credits for carbon capture, utilization and storage. In addition, the group’s allegations name provincial programs in BC, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. …The Commerce Department deferred a potential probe, suggested by the Coalition, into cases pertaining to alleged subsidies for long-term timber tenures in BC and Alberta. [to access the full story a Globe & Mail subscription is required]
The CN railway running through 100 Mile House will not be discontinued after all. District of 100 Mile House Mayor Maureen Pinkney said that the consultant hired to assess the rail line’s future had told her, and around 87 other stakeholders in the region between North Vancouver and Prince George, that removal of the rails was off the table. …CN Rail announced it would be discontinuing service between Squamish and 100 Mile House… and that rails and ties are removed after discontinuance. …Potentials for the new use of the rail tracks include the return of passenger rail to 100 Mile House. …Pinkney said that there could be opportunities from the saved rail line to make up for lost tax revenue from the closure of the West Fraser Mill, as well as the OSB plant. 
Snuneymuxw First Nation is calling on other levels of government to act to protect its waters following an oil spill and long-standing discharge of “toxic sawmill effluent” at Duke Point near Nanaimo. The nation is calling for a full environmental investigation following the incidents it says are caused by Environmental 360 and Western Forest Products. The nation has sent letters to the federal, provincial and municipal governments calling on them to act. This comes after an 
OTTAWA — The Canadian minister responsible for Canada-United States trade said Wednesday that Mexico was keen to maintain a trilateral agreement under the free trade pact between the three North American neighbors that is up for review this year. “I am reassured by the Mexican economy secretary … his desire to work with Canada and to ensure that the review of CUSMA results in a strengthened and ongoing trilateral trade arrangement,” Dominic LeBlanc said in a press conference from Mexico. LeBlanc is heading a group of over 370 delegates to Mexico for a six-day trade mission amid fears that U.S. President Donald Trump could ditch the decades-old three-way free trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada when it comes up for review later this year. “The Mexicans have very similar interests to Canada,” LeBlanc said. “We both remain absolutely committed to the trilateral free trade agreement and working together as this review process unfolds,” he added.
Massachusetts is considering changing state building codes to allow single staircases in multi-family residential buildings up to six stories. Advocates say the change would result in smaller buildings, space savings that could lead to 130,000 new housing units. Before changing the building codes, which currently require two exit stairways, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has signed an executive order establishing a technical advisory panel to study potential safety issues. “We’re all about making it easier to build more housing across our state to drive down costs for everyone,” Healey said in a statement. “While the double-stair requirement plays an important role in ensuring safety, it’s also holding us back from the type of housing construction we need to meet demand.” …New York City and Seattle, Washington have “permitted single-stair buildings up to six stories for decades,” the administration says…, as have the states of Tennessee, Montana, and Connecticut.
FRASER CANYON — The Nature-Based Solutions Foundation in Vancouver says it has recently acquired two clusters of private land inholdings totaling just over 55 hectares within the traditional territory of the Kanaka Bar Band in the Fraser Canyon for conservation purposes. According to a news release from the conservation organization, the 55 hectares of land are inside the boundaries of Kanaka Bar’s proposed Indigenous Protected & Conserved Area (IPCA). The foundation says the acquisitions will safeguard exceptionally diverse old-growth forests, including habitat that features Canada’s largest documented Rocky Mountain juniper, and they build on NBSF’s earlier purchase of the “Old Man Jack’s” parcel in 2022, thereby bringing the total to three private properties to be returned to Kanaka Bar through Indigenous-led conservation, title-registered legal protection, and long-term stewardship funding.
By the time a so-called “raw log” is loaded onto a truck — or in a small minority of cases, onto a ship — it has already travelled through a dense web of economic activity that is anything but raw. It has been identified and cruised through professional forest planning. Roads have been engineered and constructed. Heavy equipment has been purchased, financed and maintained. Logging crews have mobilized. Mechanics and welders have serviced machinery. Truck drivers have hauled. Fuel suppliers have delivered. Silviculture obligations have been funded or secured. Stumpage has been paid to the Crown on public lands. In many instances, Indigenous partnerships and benefit agreements structure access and revenue sharing. Every log carries embedded value long before it ever approaches a mill gate or tidewater. Industry analyst David Elstone has noted that it can take more than 100 distinct job functions to sustainably plan, harvest and deliver timber from forest to primary manufacturing. 
A community science initiative is uncovering previously unrecorded fungi across Greater Victoria, highlighting the region’s rich and still largely unknown biodiversity. Some discoveries may even represent species new to science. The project, MycoMap BC, invites the public to photograph, collect and submit mushroom and slime mould samples for DNA sequencing. Since launching last fall, nearly 14,000 collections have been submitted across British Columbia, including about 2,500 from Greater Victoria. “We’re building baseline data on fungal biodiversity that simply doesn’t exist yet,” said Elora Adamson, project coordinator at the University of Victoria biodiversity lab. As of mid-February, roughly 350 DNA sequencing results have been processed. Adamson said 11 collections represent species recorded for the first time in British Columbia. … Of those results, six newly recorded fungi were found in Greater Victoria, four in Sooke and two in Victoria.
QUEBEC — A group of First Nations chiefs has filed a lawsuit claiming Aboriginal title over three large tracts of land. They say it’s to have more control over forestry but the implications go much further. For months, First Nations land defenders have been disrupting the logging industry on their traditional lands. It started in protest of Bill 97, the controversial forestry reform bill that Quebec scrapped in September. Nitassinan hereditary chief Dave Petiquay says the group of hereditary chiefs — from the Haute-Mauricie and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean regions want the power to decide who can log on their lands and where. Lawyer Frédéric Bérard argues the Canadian constitution gives them that right. …The lawyer says, if successful, the suit would have repercussions for hereditary chiefs across the country and could impact future major infrastructure projects. The chiefs say they are willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
