Ken Kalesnikoff
At the same time Ottawa commissioned a task force to delve into a transformational plan for Canada’s forest industry, BC’s exports continued to plummet. The task force co-chair, Ken Kalesnikoff, believes the sector has a bright future, but trade figures emphasize the urgency the industry requires — starting with easing access to logs. …”People aren’t going to invest in an industry that doesn’t have a secure, cost-competitive fibre supply.” Pushing provinces to reform regulations and transition to land-area based licensing were among the top recommendations. …Kalesnikoff gave Parmar’s ministry credit for moving in the right direction, “But it’s not easy and inside government you have different opinions on what we should be doing and not doing,” he added. …New Brunswick, Kalesnikoff said, stood out as a shining example of how to address the need for conservation and forest biodiversity while using intensive management to produce more timber per hectare.
The Canadian government recently announced that it will lease a fleet of 10 firefighting aircraft and other support assets to be deployed for the 2026 wildfire season. The plan will see these 10 leased aircraft being managed by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre deployed strategically across the country and made available to provinces as they face intense wildfires. …This announcement follows the government’s fall 2025 budget announcement of a $316.7-million investment in Canada’s aerial wildfire-fighting capacity — an announcement that acknowledged a growing national challenge. …Canada’s wildfire aviation system remains fundamentally decentralized. What Canada lacks is a clearly defined national aerial response framework. That framework should establish how federally-funded aircraft are deployed, how they are prioritized when multiple provinces face simultaneous fires, and how they integrate with the emerging detection technologies — including satellite monitoring and long-endurance drones — that can identify fires earlier than ever before.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins claims “moving the Forest Service closer to the forests we manage is an essential action that will improve our core mission of managing our forests.” That is sophistry — a failed attempt to justify an ill-advised, destructive reorganization plan to remove Forest Service headquarters from Washington and radically cut its research infrastructure. Her fallacy implies that adjacent communities have a superior claim on national forests. …Government nihilists and dismantlers have for years peddled the “proximity begets policy expertise” canard, without evidence. …Meanwhile, Tom Schultz, the chief of the Forest Service, made clear his lingering allegiance to his former employer’s interests. Last month, he laid them out to House appropriators: “timber sales, critical minerals permitting, grazing allotment management.” That timber, he said, is “vital to the nation’s well-being.” In reality, only 6 percent of the total timber supply in the country comes from national forests.