Canada is expected to release its action plan for the forest sector this week.
“You will see it imminently,” said Corey Hogan, parliamentary secretary to the federal minister of energy and natural resources, on Thursday. “What imminently means: days, not weeks.”
Hogan spoke at the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers meeting in Langford, B.C., this week, as federal and provincial ministers scramble to save the industry from what some describe as a decades-long decline.
The federal government announced more money for the sector this week, including $400 million for regional development agencies, and $130 million for close to 60 projects across Canada.
Hogan said the provincial and territorial ministers have a chance to offer feedback on the forthcoming action plan.
“We had conversations today about it, but we also said, if there is something that gives you a lot of heartburn and you want to talk to us before this release, we’re welcome to hearing that feedback too,” said Hogan.
B.C. Forests Minister Ravi Parmar said there is nothing in the upcoming action plan that gives him any “heartburn.”
“British Columbia is fully committed to working with the federal government,” he said. “We want to ensure that we get our fair share of federal dollars to be able to help transform our sector.”
The action plan follows the release this week of a final report from the Canadian Forest Sector Transformation Task Force. The task force was launched in January with a mandate to identify practical measures to transform the beleaguered sector.
The report said Canada’s forest sector faces the twin crises of low investor confidence and low worker confidence. That’s as the sector grapples with more than 45 per cent U.S. tariffs on Canadian softwood, non-competitive cost structures, and changing consumer demand.
The report said the most significant barriers to competitiveness are domestic.
“Repeated provincial policy reforms in recent years have led to major reductions in industry access to fibre, persistent conflict over how forests are managed, and collapses in investor confidence,” said the report.
It said the impacts of climate change are also being deeply felt in British Columbia. The Mountain Pine Beetle outbreak from 1999 to 2015 killed more than half of the province’s volume of merchantable pine, while wildfires raze forests with increasing frequency.
B.C. has seen dozens of mills close in recent years. The B.C. Council of Forest Industries estimates that as many as 10,000 forest sector jobs were lost in 2025.
“Absent immediate, coordinated, and decisive action, the forest sector faces an existential risk,” said the report.
Parmar acknowledged the issues facing B.C.’s industry are more deep-rooted than U.S. tariffs and global market shifts.
“Without a doubt there are structural challenges that our forest sector faces. I would also argue that duties and tariffs compound that,” said Parmar.
“We can no longer just be a jurisdiction that provides two-by-fours and two-by-sixes to Americans. We have to do more,” he said.
The task force’s recommendations for the federal government included rapid reform of existing regulations with a focus on increasing cost-competitive fibre supply, and integrating forest management plans into Crown land decision-making.
It said the federal government should allocate up to $1 billion over the next decade for pilot local ownership models for Crown forests, including Indigenous, joint-venture and small private landowner co-operatives.
The task force recommends that provinces adopt “working forest” models with long-term leases and area-based management. The report endorses a “triad” model which identifies areas as either protected reserves, high-production areas, and “matrixed” areas that are managed for multiple uses.
It outlines a pathway in which, by 2050, forestry makes up 1.5 per cent of Canada’s GDP and the planted forest area is greater than 10 per cent of total forest.
Parmar said he would also be sharing more news in the weeks ahead on the province’s progress on a working forest framework.
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