By Cheryl Jahn

COFI still bullish on forestry

Jan 31, 2024 | 4:15 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Mill closures have devastated communities all across BC, pulling thousands of board feet of lumber out of circulation. But the Council of Forest Industries says there are still plenty of options for the sector.

“Engineered wood products, offsite modular construction, new green building systems, being able to take mass timber up to eight stories or more. These are the opportunities that are there,” says President and CEO Linda Coady. “So there is going to be demand. We know there’s going to be demand for those kinds of products. We know British Columbia can make those kinds of products.

Coady was speaking at the recent Natural Resource Forum at which Premier David Eby also gave a keynote address. He, too, has confidence in forestry, saying it is anything but a sunset industry. “The challenge for us is just making sure that as we transition from the short-term approach to land use in our province logging, watersheds, old-growth logging and so on, as we transition to a new sustainable forestry industry, we’re supporting those jobs providers so that people can count on those paychecks to pay their rent, pay the mortgage.”

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According to the Fraser Institute, Canada saw its population grow by more than a million people in 2022, and yet housing starts have remained stagnant.

“There’s been a clear increase in the trajectory of population growth, whereas housing stock growth has largely stayed flat since the 1970s,” says Steve Lepage, Senior Fellow with the Institute. “So we’re growing really fast as a population, but unfortunately we’ve really not prioritized building enough housing to keep up that fact.”

And recent policies established by the Province to address those housing gaps may keep forestry viable.

“It’s a big gap and it’s it even exists, as one of the speakers was saying, nationally we’ve got to triple the number of houses we build every year in Canada and they’ve got to be climate-friendly and low carbon and they’ve got to be affordable. And that’s the housing crisis that we’ve got here in British Columbia, but also elsewhere in Canada.”

And that’s where she says B.C. has a national role to play in addressing that housing shortage.