The forest industry in B.C. supplies building materials for homes and businesses, furniture, and the fast-growing mass timber construction industry, not to mention pulp for paper. The good thing about trees is that they grow back. Unlike oil or coal or metals dug up out of the ground, we can ensure a fresh supply of timber pretty much in perpetuity, if we manage our forests in the right way… Unfortunately, we haven’t always done that, and now we’re faced with an ecosystem that’s under stress, with too few stands of old growth left, and an industry that is used to having access to more wood than is actually sustainable. …The goal for forestry in B.C. has to be to cut fewer trees, while turning what we do cut into useful products that we can export across Canada and the world. It’s been a dream of multiple B.C. governments, and no one has managed to make it work.

There’s been mixed news for the forestry industry in the last few weeks, from the closure of a pulp mill in Prince George to new money announced for jobs. Linda Coady, President and CEO of the BC Council of Forest Industries, talks about how the sector can overcome the uncertainty it currently faces.

Bevin Wirzba & Justin Napoleon

Four more First Nations belonging to Treaty 8 have signed an agreement with the province on a land and resource use agreement for northeastern B.C.  Earlier this week, the province announced an agreement with the Blueberry River First Nation that will limit industrial development like forestry and oil and gas extraction in the First Nations traditional territory to address the cumulative impacts that constituted a breach of treaty rights.   …On Friday, the B.C. government announced four more Treaty 8 First Nations in northeastern B.C. have also now signed a consensus agreement on land and resource use: the Doig River, Halfway River, Fort Nelson and Saulteau First Nations.  The consensus agreement sets out the parameters for upholding treaty rights, addressing environmental impacts through restoration, and supporting “responsible resource development and economic activity in the northeast.”

B.C.’s beleaguered forest industry received a significant boost today with the announcement of a new project designed to fill the gap created by the global move away from single-use plastics.  About 100 jobs are expected to return to the Crofton Catalyst pulp mill on Vancouver Island through a partnership involving the provincial and federal governments and mill owner Paper Excellence.  Premier David Eby headlined a press conference at the mill site Friday morning brought together government, company and workers to announce the mill is retooling to manufacture new pulp products to replace single-use plastics.  The feds are contributing $14.3 million and the province $4.5M for a combined $18.8M along with Paper Excellence’s investment of $50M to restart Crofton’s dormant C2 paper machine. …One key benefit is getting people back to work so quickly after paper operations were curtailed in December due to weakening Chinese paper markets and escalating input costs.

Additional coverage:

• BC Ministry of Jobs: Crofton mill gets workers back on the job with gov’t funding
• CBC News: Vancouver Island pulp and paper mill to restart

Jake Power

The Power Wood specialty sawmill in Agassiz has navigated turbulence in B.C.’s forest industry without layoffs to date among its 53 workers, but CEO Jake Power isn’t so sure about the future.  “It’s been OK,” Power said. “The last … eight or nine months, the market’s been strong enough that we’ve been able to just kind of buy our way into supply” of its raw materials.  …”At the moment, we’re a little bit nervous about growing our staff,” Power said. “Because we’re in a growth phase, I guess you could say … that we’re pausing hiring in a phase where we should be hiring more.”  …The bigger problem for industry, however, is the short-term uncertainty raised by government’s promise to transform land-use management in ways that will prioritize the ecosystem values of forests over just timber values, and what that will mean for timber supplies.

Rob Schuetz

As a forest industry consultant, Rob Schuetz has been crunching numbers watching timber supplies fall and for many months and the math he’s been doing has been ringing alarm bells.  The president of Prince George-based Industrial Forestry Service Ltd., has watched anxiously as residual chip supplies have steadily fallen and the availability of pulp logs needed by local pulp mills to make up the difference has also plunged. Without fibre, pulp mills can’t operate and like many others connected to the industry Schuetz was not at all surprised when Canfor announced last week it intends to permanently close the pulp line at Prince George Pulp and Paper mill.  “It always made sense that one of the pulp mills would shut down,” said Schuetz. “We always knew that a complete shutdown of one of the mills would probably happen within the next couple years. ”