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Canadians and Individuals have been combating over wooden for many years, however new costs on northern lumber could possibly be a crippling hit towards a sector suffering from homegrown issues
Printed Apr 23, 2025 • Final up to date 20 hours in the past • 14 minute learn
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Stacks of reduce lumber at a sawmill in Sooke, British Columbia. Photograph by James MacDonald/Bloomberg
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James Furney’s black “Dump Trump” T-shirt was a present from a buddy in Los Angeles who, like an excellent proportion of parents, seen Donald Trump’s bid to change into the Republican nominee for president previous to the 2016 United States election as a publicity stunt that wasn’t humorous and wanted to be stopped earlier than one thing really unfunny occurred.
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Relying upon your political stripes and opinion of worldwide commerce relations, one thing unfunny did occur — twice — which is why on an overcast morning on north Vancouver Island, Port McNeill’s mayor fished the Trump shirt from his dresser drawer earlier than answering a name to debate the financial storm threatening to cripple a one-industry city that owes its existence to the close by forest.
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It’s a forest Furney’s father Gerry got here to from Eire in 1956. He was eager to work and, like so many different immigrants, discovered his option to a West Coast logging camp, the place any visions he could have had of changing into a lumberjack ended early on on account of a office damage and reassignment to the machine store. Because of a kindly old-timer there who inspired him to strike out past the bushes, the Irishman began a fuel-delivery enterprise servicing the camps.
James Furney, mayor of Port McNeill, B.C., sporting a Dump Trump shirt that was a present from an American good friend, stated he’s making an attempt to remain upbeat, however his lumber city was already struggling earlier than the specter of Trump’s commerce struggle. Photograph by Handout /James Furney
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Furney had different abilities as effectively, together with a present for the gab and outsized ambitions for a small forestry city of two,500 people who no one outdoors the opposite small logging and mining cities close by had heard of. These qualities led to his election as mayor, an workplace he occupied for 36 years.
“I prefer to joke that I’m the hereditary mayor,” stated his son, who additionally went into the fuel-delivery enterprise. “I keep in mind asking my father concerning the distinction between Port McNeill and different small Canadian cities and he would say to me, ‘In a mining city, the miners come, and so they go away after the ore is gone, however forestry attracts individuals who arrive with the expectation that their youngsters and grandchildren are going to search out work within the forests.’”
Port McNeill resides proof of Gerry Furney’s phrases. It’s dwelling to third- and fourth-generation loggers, whereas its timberlands, which have been spared the worst of the economic logging excesses of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, proceed to provide cut-and-milled lumber of the type that the U.S. homebuilding {industry} hungers for.
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Canada, as an entire, despatched greater than $15 billion of lumber and different sawmill merchandise to the U.S. in 2024. That wooden was topic to softwood lumber import duties which can be set to rise to 34.45 per cent in October from 14.54 per cent, and probably a further 25 per cent Trump-imposed tariff sooner or later.
“To suppose that anybody goes to be insulated from what’s going on with Trump could be delusional,” Furney stated. “We’re a forestry city and folks round city are already watching their wallets and curbing their spending, and companies that ought to be ramping up now to rent summer time college students aren’t going to be hiring.”
Trump has stated the U.S. doesn’t want Canadian wooden to construct homes, and his potential tariff hit, on high of the import duties, could be one other merciless blow to a British Columbia forestry sector that’s already in disaster on account of a multitude of the province’s personal making.
The NDP authorities elected in 2017 presumably set out with the perfect of intentions to modernize forestry in such a approach that First Nations would change into key stakeholders and {industry} resolution drivers whereas defending and limiting the harvesting of the province’s old-growth forest.
But it surely has largely produced a Twenty first-century tangle of recent laws, allowing bottlenecks, forms, rounds and rounds of talks and public consultations with out discernible motion and annual allowable reduce limits — the quantity of timber the province dictates might be reduce annually — that get set excessive, however by no means get reached.
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Briefly, B.C. has loads of wooden and loads of potential patrons for it, particularly within the U.S., which was a $5.69-billion export marketplace for the province in 2024, however not sufficient of that wooden has been getting reduce lately.
A U.S. housing disaster
That makes for gloomy days on the West Coast; a malaise that might unfold to different lumber cities in Ontario and Quebec and push the {industry} to the brink of collapse, all due to a commerce struggle no one outdoors the Oval Workplace needed, together with U.S. homebuilders who fancy Canadian spruce over American yellow pine as a result of it’s lighter and simpler for carpenters to haul round, put a nail by and take away a nail from.
Canadian spruce in all probability isn’t some extent of frequent dialogue outdoors lumber cities, however it, and Canadian wooden generally, is one thing that James Tobin, chief government of the Nationwide Affiliation of Residence Builders, an American foyer group primarily based in Washington, D.C., has been speaking about to anybody prepared to pay attention.
Bear in mind the Canadian housing disaster? It used to dominate the nationwide information cycle till Trump began a commerce struggle, an April 28 federal election name was made and the inventory market chaos took centre stage. It seems the U.S. is in a housing disaster, too, one relationship again to 2008’s nice monetary disaster.
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The U.S. has not constructed sufficient properties to maintain tempo with demand. In response to Tobin, the shortfall in single-family properties is now at 1.5 million items, a structural deficit, given the present financial local weather and the uncertainty round tariffs, that’s projected to extend even in an surroundings with out 25 per cent tariffs.
Layer on the tariffs and a foul scenario may get exponentially worse if it dries up the availability of Canadian lumber crossing the border. The U.S. imports about 30 per cent of its lumber and timber, and 80 per cent of that comes from Canada.
“Spruce-pine-fir is a most well-liked constructing materials in the case of sure parts in a home,” Tobin stated. “I firmly consider that we might not construct as many properties as affordably on this nation if it weren’t for our Canadian commerce in lumber.”
Put one other approach, the U.S. wants Canadian wooden.
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A employee installs roof trusses on a house beneath building in Winery, Utah. Tariffs on Canadian wooden threat exacerbating the reasonably priced housing disaster within the U.S. Photograph by George Frey /Bloomberg
Tobin stated the best situation for U.S. builders and homebuyers alike could be a “free commerce of lumber throughout our border.” However in the identical breath, he stated that’s by no means going to occur, mainly as a result of U.S. lumber producers are completely content material with the softwood obligation establishment and are lobbying the White Home to go after Canadian producers with a further 25 per cent tariff.
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“We have already got an reasonably priced housing disaster and including to the fee just isn’t going to be welcome information,” he stated.
Even when Trump have been faraway from the equation, softwood lumber duties would nonetheless be in place. They zig up and down, are yearly calculated and create a measure of uncertainty amongst American builders and Canadian lumber cities.
Russ Taylor, a longtime Vancouver-based {industry} marketing consultant and the namesake of Russ Taylor World, stated the duties and the long-running softwood lumber dispute at their core, which is now in its umpteenth iteration, initially flared within the Eighties, however was arguably a multitude a long time earlier than that.
The dispute is a kind of topics that coverage wonks, commerce representatives and lumber gamers are likely to prattle on about, however makes bizarre folks’s “eyes glaze over,” however he’s pleased to share what it’s all about.
The present softwood lumber dispute flared up when an 11-year commerce settlement between Canada and the U.S. expired on the tail finish of the Barack Obama administration. That settlement is now remembered because the “good previous days.” As a substitute of paying duties, a quota was placed on Canadian lumber exports to the U.S. Exceed the quota, and the producer paid a penalty.
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The settlement fostered a clear commerce surroundings and it was a win, or at the very least a workable truce, for each events till the U.S. declined to resume the settlement.
“The {industry} has existed in a form of no man’s land ever since,” Taylor stated.
Forester George Graham hikes by a stand of bushes close to Hearst in northern Ontario. Graham is frightened concerning the longevity of the province’s black spruce forests, a crucial supply of wooden for the Canadian and American home-building {industry}. Photograph by Handout /George Graham
The U.S. place is that the Canadian lumber {industry} is unfairly sponsored since a lot of the wooden that will get reduce is on public land and never topic to pure “market forces.”
This isn’t a brand new grievance, because it dates again to 2004, when Canada created a system of stumpage charges, which is the quantity a lumber firm pays to the federal government to reap bushes on a given chunk of Crown land, and the charges have been primarily based on “market forces.” However in 2015, the U.S. claimed the problem had not been mounted and it’s nonetheless taking the identical place.
And not using a commerce settlement, Canadian lumber exports, a lot to the delight of U.S. lumber producers, fall beneath the purview of U.S. commerce legislation and the Division of Commerce. Quantity crunchers there analyze the market on an annual foundation to calculate the quantity of lumber Canada sells — or, in {industry} parlance, “dumps” — into the U.S. at below-market price to provide an annual anti-dumping obligation.
“Consider it as a penalty,” Taylor stated. “American sawmills promote beneath market price, too, however they don’t get penalized for it.”
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Then there may be the “countervailing obligation.” It will get calculated primarily based on the quantity of presidency subsidies the Canadian {industry} allegedly receives for issues reminiscent of silviculture funds, forestry investments and retraining packages for laid-off staff.
Add the 2 duties collectively and that’s your softwood lumber obligation for the following 12 months, till the train repeats itself 12 months later.
Each time Canada has cried foul and contested the duties on the World Commerce Group (WTO), the case has landed amid the worldwide physique’s epic backlog of circumstances and well timed rulings are exhausting to come back by.
“Canada typically wins these disputes on the WTO,” Taylor stated. “However even when Canada does win on the WTO, the choice is already two years too late, in order that regardless of the injury is has already been finished. Meantime, the Individuals maintain tightening up U.S. commerce legislation, so it’s changing into a lot harder to win.”
That’s why softwood lumber duties are a truth of lumber {industry} life, together with inflation, excessive rates of interest, commodity costs that dip and rise and fall once more relying on what is going on within the wider economic system and, these days, a concern that a further Trump tariff could possibly be approaching Canadian wooden.
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The Lecours Lumber Co., about half-hour west of Hearst, Ont., sends about 85 per cent of its lumber by prepare by the Sault Ste. Marie border crossing to Michigan and past. Photograph by Handout /Roger Lecours
A Canadian downside
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It is sufficient to flip a fellow’s hair “white,” Roger Lecours stated. The third-generation northern Ontario sawmill proprietor and operator used to have a thick head of black hair, however it’s now white.
Black spruce reduce from the close by forests is Lecours Lumber Co. Ltd.’s bread and butter. The mill sits simply north of the Trans-Canada Freeway, about half-hour west of Hearst, a Franco-Ontarian forestry city on a stretch of street dotted with related cities with the same dependence on the bushes.
Roughly 85 per cent of the lumber milled by Lecours travels by prepare by the Sault Ste. Marie border crossing to Michigan and past. Go to a brand new subdivision in, say, Texas, and there’s a respectable probability the homes are made with northern Ontario spruce.
The frozen floor throughout a northern Ontario winter permits for heavy, timber-harvesting gear to manoeuvre and reduce, and the logging vehicles have been operating two hundreds a day into Lecours yard.
“Proper now, we’re ready to see the place the mud settles,” Lecours stated, in reference to Trump’s tariffs.
His father and grandfather cast lasting relationships with U.S. lumber wholesalers, enterprise ties he treats with the discretion of a household commerce secret, so don’t trouble asking him for any names of his American contacts. Lumber, he added, is a commodity. Value volatility is solely a part of the sport.
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For instance, lumber costs in Could 2020 have been barely treading water at US$345 per 1,000 board ft. A 12 months later, the value was bumping up towards US$1,700, a report excessive, however now the value is nearer to US$575.
However what is exclusive about right now is the Trump issue. The commerce struggle is a wildcard few in Canada noticed coming and, however household commerce secrets and techniques and longstanding relationships with American patrons, Lecours is questioning whether or not there shall be an American marketplace for northern Ontario spruce six months from now.
Because of this, he’s entertaining doable plan Bs, and promoting extra wooden to home purchasers is the best choice amongst these choices.
Liberal Chief Mark Carney has stated that if Trump doesn’t need our wooden, high-quality, Canada can use it to construct 500,000 new properties a 12 months over the following decade. That’s a giant quantity, however so is the quantity of wooden Canada exports to the U.S.
Canadian forests yielded 20.3 billion board ft of lumber in 2024, and near 60 per cent of these board ft have been shipped to the U.S. In the meantime, Canada used seven billion board ft of homegrown wooden.
Canada may fairly count on to extend its annual home lumber consumption to eight billion board ft, Taylor, the marketing consultant, stated, however it might contain some magical considering to conjure a rustic during which all of the wooden that will get reduce additionally will get used domestically.
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So, why not promote extra wooden abroad? Canadian mills are geared for the U.S. market and function on the imperial system of measurement, therefore the two-by-four. The remainder of the planet operates on the metric system, that means Canadian mills would want to bear an costly retooling to compete for world market share.
“We’re an ideal match with the U.S. market, and we all the time have been, which is why we’re so targeted on that market,” Taylor stated.
Trump could be a significant headache for the way forward for that market, however he’s not the one factor holding skilled foresters awake at night time.
On a chilly April morning in Hearst, George Graham was speaking about the way it was an ideal day to run “strains” by the forest south of city. Previous to the age of GPS, a forester would placed on snowshoes and “fly” throughout the snow-crusted panorama whereas marking out the spruce reduce blocks and the roads that will have to be constructed to provide loggers entry to them.
Graham did a bit of little bit of every part within the Hearst forest, however he’s retired now and prepping the home he and his spouse raised their youngsters in on the market. The train put him in a reflective temper.
What worries him most isn’t Canada dropping its U.S. marketplace for spruce, however Ontario dropping its northern spruce forest for good.
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Spruce bushes launch pollen that fertilizes the cones throughout a slim window in late Could and early June. It’s a course of that kicks into gear primarily based on a day’s size. However pollen has a shelf life and when temperatures get too heat, the pollen can’t survive. Forest geneticists predict the black spruce forest may expertise reproductive failure on a mass scale by 2050.
“We take our forests as a right; they’re simply bushes, proper? They don’t transfer. They don’t change. However, in fact, forests do change,” Graham stated. “What we’re going to see is a common development over just a few a long time of that forest beginning to deteriorate and never with the ability to compete, not with the ability to push off insect and fungal assaults, and experiencing reproductive failure.”
Managing a wholesome, sustainable, working forest that provides up a proportion of its timber to the mills annually requires planning forward 60 to 100 years. However the extra pressing plan, he stated, would contain the “assisted migration” of black spruce species which have tailored to hotter temperatures in southern Ontario and planting them within the north in enormous numbers to make sure there may be nonetheless a forest there to chop a century from now.
“We’re actually at some extent now the place now we have received to intervene,” he stated.
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Canadian forests yielded 20.3 billion board ft of lumber in 2024, and near 60 per cent of these board ft have been shipped to the U.S. Photograph by Stephen MacGillivray /The Day by day Gleaner
Trump’s tariff risk
If that sounds alarming, the image in Port McNeill, with or with out Trump’s tariffs, appears equally bleak.
The logging aspect of Lemare Group’s enterprise has shed 200 staff over the previous six years, in response to president Eric Dutcyvich’s finest guess, and never for lack of bushes.
His forest technicians have reported that they could possibly be slicing at twice the speed they’re, however the province’s regulatory misadventures have clogged the pipeline. Within the meantime, jobs have been misplaced, and they’re jobs with skillsets — reminiscent of constructing a street on the aspect of a mountain — that take years to be taught and pay effectively.
“The engineers that design and handle the forestry work, the companies that help them — the shops, eating places, accommodations, all the issues that you’d think about in small-town B.C. — revolve round forestry,” he stated. “Having our {industry} wrestle has been devastating for Port McNeill.”
Dutcyvich’s father got here from Saskatchewan within the Nineteen Sixties to work as a butcher in Port McNeill, however the retailer’s staff have been on strike when he confirmed up. As a substitute of crossing the picket line, he headed into the woods, the place he labored his approach up the ladder and finally purchased his personal logging operation. The corporate right now has a civil building arm and a forestry arm, and it’s the former that has been paying the payments as of late.
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The knock-on impact of much less wooden being reduce is that there’s not sufficient lumber for the mills, and when there may be not sufficient lumber and never any revenue to be made, mills shut. Ten years in the past, there have been 81 sawmills in B.C. At present, there are 61.
Dutcyvich, who can be president of the native chamber of commerce and a childhood good friend of Mayor Furney, stated that even when allowable reduce limits began being reached tomorrow, changing the expert staff he has misplaced on the flip of a swap could be unattainable. Then there’s Trump.
“If tariffs come onto our merchandise, no query, it’ll hit us exhausting, and each one among us is anxious, however it isn’t all about Trump,” he stated. “What’s damaging the {industry} — right now — is instability and coverage.”
Again on the mayor’s workplace, Furney is doing his finest to remain optimistic. There may be hope, he stated as he regarded out his window and noticed solely bushes, tens of millions of them, rising at a price sooner than they’re being reduce.
Trump won’t be eternally; tariffs could come, tariffs could go; dangerous coverage might be reworked. A number of weeks again, he gave a speech to a truckers’ affiliation and he used the event to crib a line from The Outlaw Josey Wales, a Clint Eastwood basic.
“We are going to endeavour to persevere,” he stated. “We are going to endeavour to persevere.”
• Electronic mail: joconnor@postmedia.com
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