The opening panel at the 2026 SFI Annual Conference in Montréal brought three senior executives to the stage under the moderation of outgoing SFI CEO Kathy Abusow. The conversation covered trade policy and tariffs, forest sector transformation, investment, and the role of certification in a period of structural change. Derek Nighbor is President and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada. Pete Madden is President and CEO of the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities. Lenny Joe is CEO of the BC First Nations Forestry Council.
Kathy Abusow, Derek Nighbor, Peter Madden and Lennard Joe
Abusow opened by noting that sector decline predates the current trade dispute, placing the scale of the problem on the table before the first question: 43 pulp and paper mill closures in the US — a figure she attributed to Madden — with 20 more expected, and 27 mill closures in Canada alongside 22 permanent sawmill shutdowns. She then turned to tariffs, asking Joe how trade policy and softwood lumber disputes uniquely affect First Nations. Joe said most First Nations operate as market loggers, with fibre moving through relationships with major licensees — meaning tariff-driven slowdowns hit rural communities, where most First Nations are located, directly and quickly. He noted that First Nations have been included in softwood lumber committees in BC, which he described as important for keeping the right people in the room as the industry works toward solutions. Turning to Nighbor, Abusow asked for his perspective. Nighbor said the cross-border relationship with US counterparts remains active despite the friction — phone calls and emails continuing even where joint letters are no longer possible — and noted that Canadian lumber volumes to the US dropped roughly 12% in 2025, with about eight percentage points of that loss being filled by European supply. He said he did not think it needed to be this way, and that the opportunity lies in growing the pie for the continent. Madden pointed to unintended consequences in rural communities, where mills trying to reinvest in their own infrastructure are finding imported machinery too expensive under the new tariff environment, causing capital projects to stall.
Turning to forest sector transformation, Abusow noted that the Government of Canada launched the Canadian Forest Sector Transformation Task Force in January to identify pathways to restructure, retool, and transform the sector, and asked Joe — appointed to the task force by the Minister of Natural Resources — what he was hoping it would achieve. Joe described a process that drew more than 200 meetings and written submissions within 90 days. He focused on the distinction between mobile and sticky capital — the former moving wherever returns are best, the latter tied to place through long-term relationships and multigenerational community investment. He described First Nations as a growing source of sticky capital, noting that in BC, First Nations hold close to 20% of the annual allowable cut but delivered 30% of harvested volume last year — a record that he said is being noticed in investment circles as evidence of the certainty and predictability that capital requires. He said the task force work points toward industry clusters built from the ground up as a replicable model for attracting investment into rural communities, and that First Nations, now with increasing access to capital, are looking to partner rather than start mills from scratch.
Abusow then asked Nighbor about FPAC’s priorities within the task force’s mandate, which included expanding modern construction methods, product diversification, and strengthening domestic and international markets. Nighbor said the priorities he would speak to reflect work that Indigenous leaders, labour partners and mayors and chambers of commerce in forestry communities all support. On regulation, he said the goal is not a race to the bottom but a more harmonized federal-provincial approach that stops single-variable federal interventions from disrupting ecosystem-level planning done at the provincial level. He cited species at risk, the Fisheries Act, pulp and paper effluent regulations, and migratory bird regulations as areas where federal interventions arrive at the 11th hour and upend broader planning. He added that some regulations now rolling out will take boots off the ground in ways that will make wildfire risk worse for communities. He also flagged that 80% of Canadian mills are served by a single railway, describing that as a competitiveness issue that needs to be worked through. On the opportunity side, he pointed to building code harmonization as essential to expanding mass timber and modular housing. He also cited government procurement of Canadian wood and export market diversification — including Asia for western producers, the UK and Caribbean for eastern ones, and even Australia, a market he said Canada has not engaged seriously in many years.
On investment, Abusow noted that capital gravitates toward certainty and asked the panel what makes capital stick in the forest sector. Joe returned to the industry cluster concept, arguing that First Nations’ long-term presence on the land — and their demonstrated record of moving fibre — is producing exactly the kind of predictability investors need, and that First Nations partnerships are increasingly attracting mobile capital as a result. Madden described the US Markets Matters initiative, convened by the US Forest Service together with the Endowment and the Society of American Foresters, as an attempt to address the downstream consequences of pulp and paper mill closures. With more than 60 million green tons of fibre without a market, sawmills have lost their residuals outlet and landowners can no longer afford restoration treatments, increasing fire risk. The initiative aims to bring non-traditional participants into a structured conversation focused on hard commitments and accountability milestones. Madden said those participants would include insurers, given the costs of wildfire in the wildland-urban interface; technology companies seeking green power for data centres; and the health care sector, given the connection between wildfires and conditions like asthma. He also spoke to private land — that without a timber market, private forest becomes a strip mall or a subdivision, and that investors who care about keeping forests as forests need to understand that a viable forest sector is what makes that possible. Nighbor pointed to natural capital as a large and growing opportunity, referencing Grenier’s remarks from the opening session on the nexus between forestry and conservation. He also cited biogenic carbon capture and storage as an emerging revenue stream for mills in geologically suitable regions, and described pulp and paper facilities increasingly thinking of themselves as power plants able to sell green energy into the grid.
On the role of certification, Abusow noted that in her experience speaking with pension funds and REITs, investors with a background in financial auditing quickly grasp the logic of third-party forest certification — it de-risks investment in a way they recognize — and asked the panel how certification fits into the broader investment and policy picture. Joe said SFI certification is a reflection of who certified organizations are, and that certificate holders carry a responsibility to ensure it genuinely reflects their values and practices. He connected that back to Chief McComber’s opening remarks, saying that certification, like Indigenous land stewardship, is about decisions made today whose consequences will only be visible in the future. Nighbor said the community investment dimension of SFI is distinctive among certification systems and is increasingly meaningful to governments and a new generation of procurement officers who want to see action on the ground. Abusow added that SFI has developed crosswalk tools demonstrating how its forest management and fibre sourcing standards align with major global sustainability reporting frameworks, which she said helps make the investment case to capital markets. She also described a pilot module developed with Environment and Climate Change Canada to demonstrate that SFI certification meets the requirements of critical habitat provision under the Species at Risk Act — an example, she said, of certification functioning as a policy compliance mechanism and not only a market tool.
On the EU Deforestation Regulation, Abusow noted that Canada and the US are both considered low risk under the framework but that there are still hurdles to clear for producers placing product on European markets, and asked the panel where things stand. Nighbor said Canadian industry’s concern is not with the intent of the regulation — which he said no one disputes — but with definitions that treat harvesting in previously unharvested primary forests as degradation. In Canada, he said, that framing is an affront to First Nations who have managed those lands for millennia, and it is operationally unworkable in landscapes where primary forests burn on 70- to 90-year cycles. The issue has been addressed in guidance and FAQs but not in the body of the regulation, creating problems as other markets adopt the language without the accompanying clarifications. A simplification exercise released the preceding week he described as not broadly helpful, and said a diplomatic push at the political level will likely be needed. Joe said Canadian and US First Nations and tribes have been engaging jointly in the EUDR recommendations process, including a meeting with seven tribes in Coeur d’Alene in February, with the Intertribal Timber Council working from a seat in Brussels to ensure the regulation reflects the identity and land management practices of the peoples whose territories it affects. He also noted that discussions are underway around First Nations branding tied to chain of custody standards — using certification bodies including SFI to signal, at a global market level, the stewardship embedded in the fibre’s origin.
Asked what the next ring of growth looks like for the sector, Nighbor said he is watching biogenic carbon capture and storage closely as a revenue diversification opportunity for mills in geologically suitable regions of Canada. Madden said the broader bioeconomy — biofuels, biopower, biochar — represents the most compelling investment frontier, and that the sector knows how to grow fibre and needs to attract the capital to put that competency to work. Joe said he expects a shift away from large-scale super mills toward small and medium enterprises better matched to rural communities, producing higher-value products that carry the quality signal of the standards behind them. Abusow said the common thread she sees is the need to raise awareness — with investors, governments, and policymakers — of what a viable forest sector delivers: not only timber, but the conservation, community, and climate outcomes that depend on keeping forests as forests.
Drafted with the assistance of digital tools to streamline the process.