B.C. timber industry undergoing changes

British Columbia’s forest sector has “never been under greater stress,” Premier David Eby says.

There is an “inescapable recognition that change is needed to ensure our forest industry is sustainable,” he writes in his mandate letter for the new forests minister, Bruce Ralston.

Eby’s letter to the minister of water, land and resource stewardship, Nathan Cullen, meanwhile, says “short-term thinking” in land management has led to “exhausted forests.”

The new premier’s pointed language to his ministers highlights how British Columbia’s forests sector is in the throes of change, as the province embarks on plans to “modernize” how forests are managed amid ecological concerns, fluctuating lumber prices and dwindling supply of trees for harvesting.

Bob Simpson, who served as mayor of Quesnel, B.C., a longtime forestry community, between 2014 and 2022, said the province’s forest sector is “stuck in a time warp,” carrying on with clear-cutting and exporting raw logs and lumber at a pace ecosystems and the timber supply cannot maintain.

Climate change, meanwhile, “robs us of time” to overhaul how forests are managed to protect their health and biodiversity while also transforming the industry, he said.

“We just don’t have the time to dither anymore. We have to be much more deliberate, we have to be much more courageous and we have to be much more collaborative than we’ve ever been,” said Simpson, who served from 2005 to 2013 as the NDP and then independent member of the B.C. legislature for Cariboo North.

The premier’s letter to Ralston describes the loss of swaths of forests to severe wildfires and beetle outbreaks, both of which have been linked to climate change.

Eby asserts the need for change is driven by those losses along with “inadequate land-use planning and replanting efforts by previous governments, unfair softwood lumber tariffs in the United States, and the unchecked export of raw logs.”

B.C. passed amendments to modernize forestry legislation last year, including laying the groundwork for a new system of 10-year forest landscape plans to be developed in partnership with First Nations with input from local stakeholders.

The forests minister at the time, Katrine Conroy, said the plans would prioritize forest health, replacing the existing system of plans developed largely by industry.

Conroy, who is now the finance minister, said past policies left too much control of forest operations in the hands of the private sector. The changes would put government, together with First Nations, “back in the driver’s seat,” she said.

The province reported more than $1.8 billion in stumpage fees in 2021, cashing in as lumber process skyrocketed with the COVID-19 pandemic. That uniquely large amount was generated from the harvest of about 58.2 million cubic metres of timber, said Parfitt, citing data from the government’s harvest billing system.

The second-highest revenue over the last 15 years was recorded in 2018, when B.C. collected more than $1.2 billion on the harvest of70.7 billion cubic metres.

Lumber prices have since fallen from pandemic highs, and estimates in B.C.’s last budget forecast further declines, along with lower harvests from Crown land over the next several years.

The significant investments major forest companies including Canfor, Interfor and West Fraser have made in the United States in recent years, while curtailing operations at mills in B.C., are also “signs of the coming trouble,” Parfitt added.