Derek Nighbor
President & CEO, Forest Products Association of Canada & Canadian Wood Council
Our forests are stronger when we support the communities, employees, and practices that help manage them responsibly.
Canadians care deeply about our forests. They’re part of who we are, giving us clean air, storing carbon, and providing places to work, live, gather, and enjoy.
While Canada’s forest industry is facing serious market and trade-related challenges, the forests themselves are also under real pressure. Wildfires are getting worse. Drought, pests, disease, and changing weather are affecting forest health. Communities are facing greater risk. At the same time, Canada needs more homes, stronger supply chains, lower-emission materials, and good jobs in the regions that have long helped build this country.
These things are connected, and so are the solutions.
Forested communities are part of the solution
Canada’s forest products sector is an economic anchor, rooted in hundreds of communities across the country. The forest industry is more than a mill — it supports contractors, truckers, rail and port workers, local businesses, municipal services, and families. When a mill is strong, the whole community feels it.
Our sector turns a renewable Canadian resource into products people use every day: lumber for homes, pulp and paper for hospitals and schools, packaging that moves goods, energy for heat and electricity, and innovative materials that can help Canada build cleaner, smarter, and faster. That’s why managing Canada’s forests is how we protect Canada’s forests.
The Forest Sector Action Plan is a welcome step. Through it, the federal government recognizes the pressures facing the sector and focuses on the right priorities beyond the urgent action needed on trade with the United States: competitive and predictable wood fibre supply, investment in modernization and innovation, stronger markets at home and abroad, and support for employees and communities.
It’s time to turn that plan into action that works on the ground. Sustainable forestry is not about choosing between the environment and the economy. It’s about keeping forests healthy, protecting communities, and investing in our future.
Building wildfire resilience before disaster strikes
A big part of that work is wildfire resilience. Fire suppression will always be needed when lives and homes are at risk, but Canada cannot suppress its way out of the wildfire challenge. We need to act before fires start.
That includes better planning around communities, improved forest access, and practical use of residual fibre that would otherwise add to fire risk. When permitted to thin overgrowth and remove deadwood, foresters reduce the fuel loads that turn manageable blazes into uncontrollable infernos — protecting ecosystems, air quality, highways, and critical infrastructure.
Indigenous fire stewardship and land-based knowledge must have an important role in building more resilient forests and safer communities. These approaches are practical, place-based, and rooted in long-term care for the land.
Canada is better positioned when governments work together and with Indigenous partners, workers, communities, and industry toward shared goals.
Creating the conditions for investment
Forests can help heat and electrify Canada while also creating an opportunity to leverage the value of carbon through bioenergy for carbon capture and storage projects. Mills have a ready supply of forest biomass, creating value from a surplus of lower-grade wood. By working with the sector to create more mill-based energy generation and improving investment conditions for bioenergy and carbon capture and storage projects, the federal government can enable new revenue streams and strengthen the prospects of the forest industry and mill communities.
Some pressures facing our sector are outside Canada’s control — markets will shift, trade challenges will continue, and climate impacts will intensify. But we can control the controllable.
We can improve coordination between governments, provide clearer approval timelines, support prevention-focused wildfire work, and enable good projects to progress. We can create better conditions for investment in mill modernization, bioenergy, mass timber, advanced biomaterials, and cleaner technologies.
And we can make sure Canadian wood is part of the solution as Canada builds more homes, schools, and community infrastructure. Every cubic metre of Canadian lumber used in domestic construction stores carbon while reinvesting in rural and regional economies.
Predictability matters. No company or community can plan without confidence in the fibre supply, infrastructure, and policy. When those conditions are predictable, the sector can invest, innovate, and help deliver what Canadians want: healthier forests, safer communities, and stronger regional economies.
A practical path forward
There’s no single fix for the challenges facing Canada’s forests. But there is a practical path forward: support sustainable forestry, strengthen wildfire resilience, encourage innovation, improve coordination, and recognize the forest industry as the economic anchor it is.
Protecting Canada’s forests is more than what we preserve — it’s what we do: managing forests carefully, investing with confidence, and supporting people.
Support the communities managing our forests responsibly at fpac.ca
