Conservatives promise to amp up harvest for B.C.'s beleaguered forestry sector

In an effort to increase “sustainable access” to timber in B.C.’s beleaguered forest industry, B.C. Conservative interim Leader Lorne Doerkson said Monday in a campaign platform announcement that his party would speed up issuing harvest permits and reduce regulatory costs.

In the grips of a serious downturn that has seen lumber exports fall by more than half over the last decade, and 21 sawmills close since 2022, the province’s forest sector has asked politicians to reduce layers of regulatory burden and offer consistent access to timber.

Doerkson, in releasing his party’s platform Monday, a week after the NDP and two weeks after the B.C. Greens, characterized it as a promise to “fight for every forestry job and make sure B.C. forestry is here for our children and our children’s children.”

To the province’s key industry group, the Conservative platform appears to get at more of the issues it has been asking for government to address than the NDP policy promises, which aim at industry transformation.

“(However) overall, we continue to see a bit of a lack of urgency that’s needed to stem the tide of forest mill closures,” said Kim Haakstad, CEO of the Council of Forest Industries. “And I think that’s true actually of all parties.”

Central to the Conservative platform is a commitment to increase the provincial harvest to 45 million cubic metres of timber from just under the 30 million cubic metres forest companies cut last year, which was only half of the 60 million cubic metres set by B.C.’s chief forester as a sustainable annual harvest.

In an email in response to Postmedia questions, Doerkson said that it was NDP Leader David Eby who set the objective for a 45-million-cubic-metre timber harvest, “and then let the sector collapse underneath it.”

“After nine years of the NDP, B.C.’s forestry industry has shrunk by half and more than 15,000 jobs are gone,” Doerkson said.

At a high level, the Conservative platform promises to create a “major project-style permitting process,” which reduces decision timelines to months from the years it has often taken under the last government.

Doerkson said a Conservative government would extend the B.C. manufacturing jobs fund established by the NDP government and promised to invest in skills training to expand Indigenous participation in the industry.

At the same time, he committed to “eliminate unnecessary permitting costs” in the regulatory process, which would take place through a “single window” to provide one point of contact for First Nations referrals on a single timeline for companies.

Other promises in the platform include resolving deferrals in the NDP’s old-growth forest protection strategy “protecting the rarest ecosystems and returning remaining land to the working forest” and establishment of a biomass and bioenergy strategy starting with “clean fuels hubs,” in Prince George and Kamloops.

Among other platforms, the B.C. Greens reject the establishment of a so-called working forest in favour of working toward ecosystem management and permanent protection of big-treed old-growth forests.

“A lasting forestry economy cannot be build by trying to return to the harvest levels of the past,” Green Leader Emily Lowan said in releasing the party’s policy.

The NDP’s Ravi Parmar, forest minister in Eby’s cabinet, said much of the Conservative policy resembles measures the previous government was already working toward, such as establishment of a biomass strategy, where B.C. Hydro and the ministry of forests “have been making real progress.”

Parmar added that the NDP remains committed to reaching a 45 million cubic metres per year in annual timber harvest, but the Conservatives can’t “essentially magically get us up to a harvest of 45 million cubic metres,” with a “grandiose statement.”

The policy, he said, doesn’t acknowledge punitive duties in the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute or the role of how poor markets have played in the province’s reduced harvest.

“We have areas across the province that are permitted, ready to go,” Parmar said. “And the reason it’s not being harvested is because of the economics of forestry.”

Haakstad said COFI hasn’t yet graded the policy platforms of the major parties, but both the Conservatives and NDP have made promises that would help the industry.

However, Haakstad added that the industry’s No. 1 ask in the campaign is for government to address economic and predictable access to timber.

On that front, “the Conservatives, in their platform, have really got to the heart of some of the biggest issues that we have,” she added. “If (timber) doesn’t get to our sawmills, it doesn’t move up the value chain.”