Bruce Anderson, Chief Strategy Officer and Partner at Spark Advocacy, delivered the luncheon keynote at the 2026 COFI Convention under the session title “View from Ottawa: Navigating the New North,” offering delegates a public opinion researcher’s read on the state of Canadian politics, the national mood, and what both mean for the forestry sector. The session was moderated by Zara Rabinovitch, Vice President of Sustainability and Public Affairs at COFI. Anderson, who has worked with the forestry sector since the mid-1990s and described the past year as the most significant period of change he has observed in four decades of public affairs work, organized his remarks around three themes: the shift in Canada’s political life, the mood of the public, and what he called the forest and the trees — his observations on where forestry sits in the current federal landscape.
On federal politics, Anderson said Canadians have moved decisively away from performative politics toward a demand for serious leadership and serious solutions. He cited polling showing that 85% of Canadians agree the country faces more serious challenges than in past years, and that when asked what kind of government they want, Canadians disproportionately favour a centrist government focused on fiscal and economic issues — a significant shift from a decade ago. He said BC public opinion mirrors the national picture on this question almost exactly. He added that he does not expect a federal election until 2029, and that the government’s likely move to a comfortable majority following upcoming by-elections will give it the parliamentary stability to pursue its policy agenda without disruption.
Anderson described what he sees as three operating principles now coming from the top of the federal government: speed, to meet the pace of disruption; focus, to concentrate on the most urgent and consequential priorities rather than trying to do everything; and unity, with what he characterized as the best relationship between a prime minister and provincial premiers that he can recall. He said the government operates more like a business than its predecessor in the sense that it starts from the premise that businesses need to succeed, invest, and create wealth — a meaningful shift in orientation.
On the public mood, Anderson said Canadians are worried and stressed, with 89% agreeing it is hard to feel hopeful about the state of the world. He said the most acute problem he sees is generational — that younger Canadians, particularly those under 40, do not see the same economic opportunity their parents did, and that housing affordability is at the centre of that breakdown. He used BC as an illustration: a middle-class Vancouver home that should cost roughly $85,000 in inflation-adjusted terms from a century ago now costs $1.1 million. He said a forest worker a century ago had a 70-80% chance of affording such a home; today, zero. He described this not as an inevitability but as a policy failure — one that is fixable with serious purpose but has been decades in the making.
On forestry specifically, Anderson said he has never seen a federal government more preoccupied with natural resources and more interested in finding new markets, attracting investment, and expanding resource sectors. He described this as a moment of profound opportunity for the sector, though he was careful to note the opportunity does not exist equally across all resource sectors. He presented fresh polling gathered for the convention showing that BC residents identify tariffs and regulations equally as causes of the forest sector’s challenges — 35% citing both together, 34% citing tariffs alone — a finding he said underscores that even if tariff relief proves difficult to achieve, regulatory reform remains an important and more tractable lever for moving the sector from surviving to thriving.
Anderson also presented a finding he said reflects a meaningful shift in public sentiment. A year ago, Canadians were fearful that Trump’s tariffs would cause unrelenting damage to Canada. Today, 70% say Trump is actually creating opportunity for Canada — not because they think his policies are good, but because they see Canadians responding by saying we need to figure this out ourselves, build new relationships with the world, and be entrepreneurial about finding new markets. He said that spirit of self-reliance and diversification is a tailwind for sectors like forestry that are already doing that work.
Anderson challenged what he described as the industry’s tendency to worry too much about its social licence. He said the public is not fundamentally hostile to forestry — that this industry has what he called millennial social licence, having worked through the certification debates and the environmental conflicts of past decades. What people want to hear about, he said, is thriving economic opportunity, good-paying jobs, and the ability for workers and families to afford homes and build lives. The conversation about sustainability credentials, in his view, is largely finished. The conversation that matters now is about prosperity.
On BC’s political environment, Anderson noted that the province has not seen the same decline in polarization observed nationally, and said the risk of that continuing is real. His advice to politicians on both sides was to resist the temptation to weaponize Indigenous rights as a culture war issue, describing that approach as the opposite of public service. At a moment when everyone wants to be asking how we work through these things, he said making that question more intractable would be damaging to the sector and to the economics of the province.
On what forestry should be asking of Ottawa, Anderson said the sector needs to move beyond asking for a fair share of attention or a process, and arrive instead with specific, outcome-oriented asks. He said governments will provide support when asked — but the compass should be pointed toward what it would actually take for forestry companies to make money, keep communities open, and provide stable jobs. Bandwidth in Ottawa is scarce and goes to urgent problems and to opportunities with a clear business case, and the sector’s advocacy will land better if it is framed around concrete solutions.
In response to a question about where forestry fits relative to other resource sectors in the federal government’s priorities, Anderson acknowledged the question is harder to answer for forestry than for mining or critical minerals, partly because of the complexity of provincial jurisdiction over the resource and partly because the question of how much bigger the sector can realistically get is less obvious. He said the desire to help is there, but that moving from a survive conversation to a thrive conversation requires the sector to define what thriving looks like and what it would specifically take to get there.
On the softwood lumber file, Anderson described the underlying political dynamics in the United States as deeply entrenched — organized around political donations and recurring self-interest that has long shaped US tariff policy toward Canadian lumber. He noted that the current US administration has added new layers of unpredictability, including a reported move to shut down regional and national US Forest Service offices. He said he finds the softwood lumber conversation difficult to resolve from a public affairs standpoint, but expressed confidence in federal Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s understanding of the file and in the Prime Minister’s disposition to take time rather than accept a bad deal. He noted that 80% of Canadians now believe that whatever agreement might be reached, they could not count on the current US administration to honour it — a shift from a year ago when two-thirds wanted a deal reached urgently.
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