Predictions for 2025 include: Energy output will jump… we’ll stop talking about hybrid work… maybe… the education boom will end… the north will struggle to retain population… we’ll stop ignoring the provincial deficit. …The outlook for forest products—though an inherently renewable industry, forestry seems to be stuck in a slow, structural decline. Once credited with generating 50 cents of every dollar in B.C., the sector now accounts for between 1.5 and 3 percent of GDP, with its spinoff effects registering no more than 10%. The combination of weak markets, falling timber supply due to beetles and conservation and a new round of U.S. softwood lumber tariffs has forest companies closing mills for good now, with little to no investment in new capacity. “Once you close those mills, I don’t see them coming back,” Bryan Yu, chief economist at Central 1 Credit Union says.