Jock Finlayson

For several years, British Columbias forest products sector has been struggling, weighed down by a mix of dwindling fibre supplies, high operating costs, steep (and recently increased) US duties on southbound lumber exports, and cumbersome regulatory and permitting systems designed and administered by the provincial government. An industry that long ranked as BC’s number one source of export earnings and served as a mainstay of jobs and business activity in every region of the province has fallen on exceptionally hard times. However, even in its diminished state, the combined logging, wood products manufacturing, and pulp/paper industries continue to make outsized contributions to the province’s economy. 

Since 2021, apart from what every forest industry executive I have consulted describes as a punishingly uncompetitive regulatory environment, the biggest problem for the BC industry is the vertiginous decline in access to fibre. Without an adequate supply of raw material, industry has had no alternative but to shrink; a gradual vanishing act that is still underway. …This explains why BC’s biggest forest companies have been directing their capital, management attention, and growth ambitions elsewhere. British Columbia has become a high cost producing jurisdiction, with a shrinking and unstable fibre supply base, a uniquely difficult day-to-day operating environment for logging contractors and lumber manufacturers, and a “land-lord” that exhibits almost no understanding of what it takes to succeed in business. No wonder independent equity analysts now describe forestry in BC as essentially “uninvestable”.