Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to share some views on behalf of Canfor, as part of your study.
After looking at your record, I know you've heard from a number of people about the importance of forestry to the Canadian economy. There are 200,000 direct jobs that the sector supports, and families and communities across our country make a living and have a good life through the forest products industry. I think you've also heard about the critical importance of securing a trade agreement with the U.S. so that Canadian producers can fairly access our largest market. I share these views and would like to complement them with a few thoughts from Canfor's perspective.
Canadian Forest Products, or Canfor, is proudly headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. Our company started out as a single, family-owned sawmill on the banks of the Fraser River in the 1930s, initially employing about 28 people. Now, nearly nine decades later, Canfor has grown into one of Canada's largest diversified forest products companies, employing 2,700 people in Canada and operating globally, including facilities in the U.S. south and in Sweden. In B.C. and Alberta, our operations include eight sawmills, two pulp mills, specialty paper and lumber facilities, a tree nursery and a green energy plant.
Success in our sector depends on two critical things: secure, predictable access to sustainably grown timber; and secure, reliable access to markets, most notably the U.S., which is our largest trading partner.
For decades, however, our sector has faced unfair duties that harm both Canadian workers and U.S. consumers. As a mandatory respondent in the seemingly endless rounds of softwood lumber disputes, our company has spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars on litigation. We are one of the largest duty payers, having paid cash deposits now totalling more than $1 billion since 2016, and with our combined duty rate now at 57.6%, we expect to pay more than $100 million again in 2026.
Without question, this is placing a tremendous financial burden on our company and on companies across the country. We acknowledge and appreciate the significant efforts of the Government of Canada and the embassy in Washington to advance our interests with the administration and to work towards a new agreement. We also recognize the challenges involved in getting to the negotiating table. We know that U.S. protectionism on softwood is a bipartisan issue, and we have faced duties with both Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
To mitigate the impacts of U.S. duties and tariffs, we are focused on things that we can control: deriving more value from our operations, controlling costs, operating safely and exploring ways to retool some of our Canadian operations to create higher-value products for customers here and around the world. While we are controlling what we can, we also believe there are actions that the government can take to support companies in the near term. We offer the five following recommendations.
First, we appreciate the loan programs introduced by the federal government to support liquidity, including measures to aid workers. [Technical difficulty—Editor] meaningful and easy to access, and they must provide immediate relief.
Second, as we assess the potential investments in our Canadian operations that could further diversify products and markets, federal support could be instrumental in making this possible. Establishing a federal capital investment fund could expedite projects to retool facilities to create higher-value-added products and to expand into markets that are not subject to duties and tariffs. We're assessing potential investments in both our B.C. and our Alberta operations that could benefit from such a fund, and we would welcome the opportunity to discuss how a program like this could be structured.
Third, as a market leader in exports to Asia and as a company that operates in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, our team has a strong understanding of global opportunities for Canadian wood products. We support intensified overseas marketing and diversification efforts across all industries, including forestry, and we believe that restoring meaningful funding for market expansion initiatives is required to support this effort. We would also encourage the inclusion of the forest sector in any future team Canada trade missions.
Fourth, as government works to streamline approvals for major nation-building projects, we'd urge a similar approach for all industries working on the land base. We note the announcement of a new task force for the forest sector, which represents an opportunity to assess cost competitiveness, productivity, the regulatory burden and streamlined permitting, both federally and provincially. We'd be happy to contribute to this work, but we are mindful of the need for urgency. This work must yield outcomes and not simply be more thought and study.
Finally, the Canada Revenue Agency could help our sector by expediting corporate tax refunds for the 2024 tax year. Canfor filed its return in June 2025 and is still awaiting a refund. Issuing refunds as early as possible would provide immediate liquidity that could help us pay the significant duty obligations we face today and in the months ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity to present, and I look forward to your questions.