By Cheryl Jahn

The lack of forestry in the budget “disappointing”

Mar 5, 2025 | 3:45 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – One-by-one Finance Minister Brenda Bailey ran down funding for health, education, housing, affordability, and the film industry yesterday. But there was one glaring omission.

“We’ve heard from the government that they acknowledge that forestry is in a special case because we have both the tariffs that are broad-based on all industries and the unsettled long-term issues related to the softwood lumber dispute and to see nothing in the budget and really nothing in the tariff relief packages so far for the forestry sector is really disappointing,” says the President & CEO of the Council of Forest Industries, Kim Haakstad.

Conservative MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie, Kiel Giddens, says that lack of any attention to a sector that badly needs help is jarring.

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“It’s concerning. We actually need to find ways to get our forest sector competitiveness and it was not mentioned in the Throne Speech and it’s not mentioned in the budget documents, which is very alarming at a time when not only tariffs but duties on our softwood are actually top of mind right now for those working in the forest sector.”

The only mention of forestry in the budget is a decline in harvest levels each year to 29 million cubic metres in 2027-2028, well below the annual allowable cut of 45 million cubic metres.

“We knew we wouldn’t get there this necessarily this year. But we really thought that in the three-year government plan that we saw it delivered with the budget yesterday, that we would see a forecasted increase in in timber harvest in the province. We didn’t,” says Haakstad. “And so we’re really concerned about what that means for the jobs in the forestry sector that people in and around Prince George depend on.

In recent years, 13 mills have closed in this region covered by the Steelworkers, Local 1-2017, alone including three in December. It’s thousands of jobs.

“We need British Columbians to really push back,” says Giddens. “And we saw that with the Tidewater refinery. People were willing to come forward with ideas for how to save jobs in Prince George. Let’s continue to do that. We need momentum to actually support hardworking people in Prince George-Mackenzie who are just trying to feed their families right now. And in a time of economic uncertainty, we’re all in this together.”

The only shining light for forestry is the provincial commitment to streamlining the permitting process.