How the hell did we end up in this situation?

It’s a question that everyone involved in British Columbia’s wood products business has asked themselves during the last few years.

The question doesn’t have a simple answer. Instead, there are several contributing factors that have steered the forest industry into its current mess. But two problems are of critical importance now: securing reliable fibre access and dealing calmly with the international uncertainty triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s lust for world trade dominance and military supremacy.

But the B.C. forest industry has deep roots and some of the issues which began long ago have now come home to roost. All at the same time. They’ve created a confluence of concerns. That’s evident in the silent sawmills, the scattering of a skilled workforce—and communities in crisis throughout the B.C. interior.

Back in the 1980’s, loggers were among the first to report increasing tell-tale signs of initial beetle attack on lodgepole pine stands in remote areas of west central B.C. Several of them were in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park.  Most of the outbreaks were small in size. The kind of sites a buncher and a skidder could clean up during an afternoon’s work.

“No logging in provincial parks” ruled the government’s parks ministry.

“It’ll get cold next winter and that will slow the beetles down,” was the B.C. Forest Service attitude. The trouble is, it didn’t get cold enough, long enough or at the right time the next winter to curtail beetle populations. Or in the winter after that and the next and so on.

As a result of a lack of any significant early control measures and an abundance of the beetles’ preferred stands of mature pine, the mountain pine beetle populations rapidly soared from being endemic in the ecosystem to becoming epidemic.

It spread out to become Canada’s worst natural habitat disaster—and its aftermaths continue. The provincial forest ministry estimates that by 2015 a staggering 731 million cubic metres of merchantable timber had been killed in the pine beetle epidemic. There have been lesser surges in other insect populations, including the spruce beetle and the Western Balsam Bark beetle.

The real villain of the piece is the warming climate. It has delivered unexpected and profound consequences around the world. In B.C., the warmer climate has also increased the numbers, types and severity of wildfires in the province. It’s a trend forecast to continue.

As with the beetle, wildfires are a natural part of B.C.’s forest environment. But today’s versions have morphed into a more unpredictable beast. They start earlier in the year and persist longer than the old norm. Individual lightning strikes tend to cluster, then merge, and they’re often fueled by beetle-killed debris, to rapidly create megafires. They can create their own micro-climates giving them more unpredictable and intense consequences which complicate their control.

By mid-August of 2025, the forest service estimated that 7.3 million hectares of forest land had been burned by forest fires, making it second only to 2023’s record setting fire season.

B.C.’s loss of productive forest land to beetles and wildfires has been immense. But several other pressures on the land base also impact the provincial forest sector and the businesses and communities dependent upon its health. The province’s growing population eats up more land to accommodate the increasing demands for new infrastructure.

But a much more significant withdrawal from B.C.’s public land base has been to accommodate First Nations in their long drive for self determination and reconciliation. The B.C. Council of Forest Industries (COFI) estimates the figure at around 20 per cent. The land is not necessarily lost to forest industry activity. Several First Nations have and are planning forest industry activities on these lands. The challenge is for forest companies to forge relationships with First Nations that are mutually beneficial—and as quickly as possible.

Calls for the creation of reserves on Crown land are on the increase. They might be from First Nations for cultural features or for the protection of wildlife habitats and aquatic buffers.

Then there’s the pressures to protect the province’s old growth timber stands. Those pressures resulted in the province declaring a temporary moratorium in 2021 on about 2.4 million hectares of “old growth” forests. First Nations were to have first call on classifying the forest stands for preservation. That was where the situation still rested at press time.

All those factors are on the land supply side of the ledger. A graph of the cost of doing business in B.C.’s forest sector would show a steeply rising trend. Higher inflation and interest rates have taken their toll along with the overall rising costs of financing and business operation.

What is proving most damaging however, are the costs imposed on the industry by two levels of government, one federal and one provincial.

Canada and the United States have been bickering for many decades about lumber exports. It was supposed to have reached a resolution with the signing of the Canada – U.S. Softwood Lumber Agreement in 1982. But it didn’t hold for long. It was regularly tinkered with but never really satisfied either party.

For the last several years, each time the issue came to a head, Canada was forced to appeal to international trade adjudicators to rule on the latest U.S Department of Commerce claims of Canada’s illegal trade practices. Each time, Canada’s appeal was upheld and the fines levied and held returned. Then along came Donald Trump and his fascination with tariffs as the tool to get his way.

Most Canadian forest companies now face about a 45 per cent tariff/duty on softwood lumber entering the U.S. thanks to the American president. That will create a major financial burden for every lumber producer—and too much for some.

Dealing with President Trump’s mood swings is a federal government responsibility despite the provincial implications. Enabling more flow of wood fibre and lowering the levels of bureaucracy within the Ministry of Forests, though, falls squarely into provincial jurisdiction. And that’s where it has been mired for much of David Eby’s NDP tenure.

It literally can take years to extract a valid cutting permit from the provincial government to harvest timber from Crown land. B.C.’s reputation as a premier supplier of quality lumber products in an increasing competitive world lumber market has sunk as its operating costs have climbed. B.C. is no longer viewed as a reliable place to invest despite its sawmilling expertise, skilled workforce and sophisticated infrastructure. Only Premier Eby knows why this is being allowed to happen and he’s not talking.

What he is proposing is the resurrection of an old idea. It involves the creation of regional working tables where First Nations, forest industry and representatives from the area’s other land user groups work to hammer out a consensus for development or otherwise of the region.

Other reports recommending changes to provincial government forest policy have been received, but remain sitting on shelves. The latest presentation last fall focused on B.C. Timber Sales. It included several suggestions to make the agency function faster and more efficiently. So far, nothing has been enacted.

Meanwhile, in an interesting development, a group of 11 forest industry associations have united with a single voice to emphasize to the provincial government the importance of providing the forest industry the fibre flows it needs to function immediately, and to re-examine its development costs to its procedures.

The Truck Loggers Association (TLA) recently held its 84th annual convention and trade show in Vancouver. It was well attended. Jim Girvan, a former TLA executive and now a forestry consultant was speaking at the convention to Premier Eby’s landscape planning proposals when he summed up the industry’s predicament.

“We can’t wait five to 10 years to get this (planning table work) done, or else there won’t be an industry to get to.”