Evidence of meeting #14 for Natural Resources in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was forests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Absolutely, it's backwards in this country at times.
I'll switch to the mayor.
Your Worship, Mr. Dahl, you talked a little bit about the good times and bad times in your industry. Would you characterize the last decade as a bad time?
Conservative
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Many Canadians would agree with you.
We've seen in the last decade a layering of regulations and increased taxes. First, it was the carbon tax that the federal government brought in and then they removed it. Now, it is shifting to an industrial carbon tax, which is going to hurt all industries in Canada for no benefit. However, in your industry, probably the number one thing is the tariffs and Mark Carney's inability to get a deal or to fulfill his promise of having one by July.
Perhaps you could summarize what has happened because of that deal not happening since July, or the promise that he made that he would have a deal by July. It's a few months after. In the last few months, how have the job losses affected your community?
Mayor, City of Campbell River
The tariffs have been bad for, as someone mentioned, already 30 years or more. However, since April 2025, we have seen six major sawmills permanently or indefinitely close, representing 1,720 direct jobs in British Columbia.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
I understand you used to have a mining sector. We know, with changes in the regulatory process the Liberals brought in—Bill C-69 and some of the other anti-resource-based policies—it has driven out different mine operations across Canada.
Can you explain a little bit more about the mining opportunity that was in your community and then what happened?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
I'd just remind everyone that this is a forestry study, but please go ahead, Mr. Dahl.
Mayor, City of Campbell River
Primarily, it's a zinc mine, an underground zinc mine, and I think the only mine operating in a provincial park in Canada. It closed about a week before Christmas in 2023.
Mayor, City of Campbell River
Yes. That's another 300 jobs that we really couldn't afford to lose, good-paying jobs.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
Thank you, Mr. Tochor. That's your time.
I would ask colleagues to stick to the topic at hand.
Mr. Hogan, you have five minutes.
Liberal
Corey Hogan Liberal Calgary Confederation, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Jeffery, the forestry sector, in my opinion, requires really three things: access to economic inputs, access to capital and access to markets. Wrapped over all of this is the technology, the training, to make this all happen. You touched on a few of those, but you identified domestic markets as the biggest opportunity and I want to focus there.
First, though, you seemed to run out of time in your remarks in that section. Did you have anything you wanted to add to that before I get into my question?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
I had so much more to say. I don't think I want to waste your time on all of it, but I'm happy to follow up with anybody in the committee on that.
Liberal
Corey Hogan Liberal Calgary Confederation, AB
Okay.
As you noted in the recently passed budget 2025, there are commitments to build big, build broad and build with Canadian lumber, but now it needs to be operationalized. You mentioned that this would be an opportunity, even if we could get a 10% shift in demand, to fundamentally change the fortunes of the forestry product sector. Did you want to expand on your thoughts on that?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
Sure. One of the things I was going to talk about was Build Canada Homes. That's the major effort now. We need to realize on that effort and that opportunity. Again, in the things we would like to see from there as it makes its way and develops its policies is that pipeline that I was talking about earlier for creating decades of demand.
We just took a delegation of small and medium-sized enterprises to Sweden. Sweden, in the 1970s, did a one-million homes initiative. That's what spurred their country to become a country that builds 80% of its housing needs in factories. Build Canada Homes can create that demand and create decades of demand.
On de-risking investment, I never got to finish my comments there, but there are other things that government can do in that regard through Build Canada Homes, such as taking equity positions, loans and those kinds of things to help these firms de-risk. Again, I was talking about fixing procurement and payment approaches to match factory construction. Some of that money can go to retooling sawmills. Then again, the buy Canadian procurement policy needs to specify in it Canadian lumber products, panel products and wood products.
I will say that my concluding remarks were going to be that the forest sector can deliver a triple word score. We can deliver you low-carbon affordable housing and non-residential construction using sustainable wood and forest products created here in our sustainable well-managed forests, and that can support the 200,000 direct jobs in the forest sector across the country, plus the 200,000 additional indirect jobs as well as jobs in construction.
Nobody is talking about it right now, but there are 70,000 fewer construction workers in Toronto and 30,000 fewer construction workers in Vancouver right now, because the market slowed down. We need to get the market up and running. The government could be a catalyst to help that market start to recover.
We need to start looking at these other things, at different ways of approaching it.
Liberal
Corey Hogan Liberal Calgary Confederation, AB
Yes, and as you know, in Calgary, for example, my hometown, the average age of a construction worker is 56 or 57. When you start thinking about expanding and the level of building we want to do, it starts to become quite an interesting challenge.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
That's why modern methods of construction become very attractive, because you're building this stuff in factories now, and you don't need as many of those 56-year-old carpenters. You can build this stuff in factories, and you can build it with light wood frame materials. You can build it with panels, using the existing products we make. There's a synergy here.
We're hosting an event on December 2. We're bringing the industrialized construction guys and the sawmills together to ask what we need to do together to realize on this opportunity, because the opportunity is right in front of us.
Liberal
Corey Hogan Liberal Calgary Confederation, AB
Would you also say that those more senior journeymen in a factory setting are more able to supervise crews of the less experienced?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
Yes...and transfer knowledge.
Liberal
Corey Hogan Liberal Calgary Confederation, AB
That's perfect. Thank you.
What about the pipeline of pre-orders and pulling forward demand that is going to exist anyhow?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wood Council
Both the federal government and the provincial governments are in the non-market housing business. Through their procurement, they can start to specify that they're going to use these modern methods of construction as well as the traditional ones and create those order files so that we'll know those order files are there. They can get those order files onto people's books. I'm told by the industrialized construction guys that they don't really need your money; they need consistent order files. If they have the order files, then they'll invest.
It's boom and bust right now. If they get a 100-home order, they'll build 100 homes, and then they don't have any new homes to build. If they have the backstop of government non-market housing, they can fill in those dead spaces. If you give them that solid work order file, they'll invest in their facilities and their people and they'll deliver the housing.
Liberal
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Jeffery, in response to Mr. Hogan's question, you mentioned retooling sawmills. When it comes to federal financial support, the armed wing of the government is Economic Development Canada.
However, if a sawmill asks the federal government for financial help to purchase equipment or retool, the default answer is no, because the request is referred to Global Affairs Canada. The government thinks providing that help would cause problems with the U.S. trade agreement.
I think that's a travesty. The federal government's vehicle for economic development can't be used to help a sector of the economy, the forestry sector. That puts us at a total disadvantage.
Is that something you've experienced in recent years, in other words, a lack of financial support, for sawmills in particular?