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Path Ahead For Wood On the BC coast, 10 mills have permanently closed since

Industry Remains Tough 2018, resulting in 5,800 job losses, said Peter Lister, executive
director for the Truck Loggers Association.
Pulp mill closures are particularly devastating to local
Forest sector in BC to see tough year in 2026 economies, as they provide high-paying jobs and provide
A federal task force announced earlier this month will attempt millions in industrial taxes.

to save Canada’s stricken forest industry from further decline The Municipality of North Cowichan lost 370 direct high-
through product and market diversification, according to paying jobs as a result of the Crofton mill’s closure, and this
bowenislandundercurrent.com. year the district expects to lose $800,000 in industrial taxes,
While the support will no doubt be welcomed by the said North Cowichan Mayor Rob Douglas.
industry, in British Columbia (BC), the more immediate need The industry is in crisis, a number of speakers said at the
is access to timber. Truck Loggers Association convention.
Canada’s forestry sector has been pummelled by a one- Policies introduced by the NDP government—including
two punch of low lumber prices, and American tariffs and a moratorium on logging old growth and new eco-system
duties on softwood lumber. based land management—have contributed to driving up

The situation is particularly dire in BC, where an integrated the cost of harvesting and lengthening the time it takes to
industry of lumber, remanufacturing, pulp and pellet mills has get cutting permits.
been collapsing like a row of dominos. BC’s forest industry is highly integrated, with pulp mills
In 2025 alone, BC lost three major operations: the Crofton dependent on sawmill waste.
pulp mill on Vancouver Island, the West Fraser sawmill in 100 But so many sawmills have closed that the few pulp mills
Mile House and a Drax pellet mill in Williams Lake. remaining in BC have had to resort more and more to pulp
Since 2022, 15,000 forest sector jobs have been lost, logs, which is more costly, and even imports of wood chips.

according to the Council of Forest Industries (COFI), and since
2023 there have been 21 permanent or indefinite mill closures. US sees a fall in both lumber imports and employment
According to eyeonhousing.org, US sawmill production was
Tama66 unchanged in the third quarter according to the Federal
Reserve G.17 Industrial Production report.
Utilisation rates for sawmills and wood preservation industries
remained near 70 percent despite a weakened demand
environment from lower levels of residential construction in
the third quarter of 2025.

The most notable lumber trend from the third quarter was
the sharp drop for US imports of softwood lumber, as higher
duties went into effect.
Over the full year of 2025, the US imported an estimated
12.7 billion board feet of softwood lumber, marking the lowest
annual import level since 2014.
The sawmill utilisation rate, a measure of actual production