Conservatives promise to amp up harvest for B.C.'s beleaguered forestry sector

A machine unloads logs for processing at the West Fraser Timber Co. sawmill in Quesnel. In the grips of a serious downturn that has seen 21 sawmills close since 2022, the province's forest sector has asked politicians to reduce layers of regulatory burden and offer consistent access to timber. Photo by David Ryder /Bloomberg

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B.C. Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson said Monday his party would speed up issuing harvest permits and reduce regulatory costs in an effort to increase “sustainable access” to timber in B.C.’s beleaguered forest industry.

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In the grips of a serious downturn, with lumber exports falling by more than half over the last decade and 21 sawmills closing since 2022, the province’s forest sector has asked politicians to reduce layers of regulatory burden and offer consistent access to timber.

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Doerkson, in releasing his party’s platform Monday, a week after the NDP and two weeks after the B.C. Greens, characterized his promise as a “fight for every forestry job and make sure B.C. forestry is here for our children and our children’s children.”

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To the province’s key industry group, the Conservative platform appears to get at more of the issues it has been asking for government to address than the NDP policy promises, which aim at industry transformation.

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“(However) overall, we continue to see a bit of a lack of urgency that’s needed to stem the tide of forest mill closures,” said Kim Haakstad, CEO of the Council of Forest Industries. “And I think that’s true actually of all parties.”

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Central to the Conservative platform is a commitment to increase the provincial harvest to 45 million cubic metres of timber from just under the 30 million cubic metres forest companies cut last year, which was only half of the 60 million cubic metres set by B.C.’s chief forester as a sustainable annual harvest.

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In an email in response to Postmedia questions, Doerkson said that it was NDP Leader David Eby who set the objective for a 45-million-cubic-metre timber harvest, “and then let the sector collapse underneath it.”

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“After nine years of the NDP, B.C.’s forestry industry has shrunk by half and more than 15,000 jobs are gone,” Doerkson said.

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At a high level, the Conservative platform promises to create a “major project-style permitting process,” which reduces decision timelines to months from the years it has often taken under the last government.

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Doerkson said a Conservative government would extend the B.C. manufacturing jobs fund established by the NDP government and promised to invest in skills training to expand Indigenous participation in the industry.

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At the same time, he committed to “eliminate unnecessary permitting costs” in the regulatory process, which would take place through a “single window” to provide one point of contact for First Nations referrals on a single timeline for companies.

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Other promises in the platform include resolving deferrals in the NDP’s old-growth forest protection strategy “protecting the rarest ecosystems and returning remaining land to the working forest” and establishment of a biomass and bioenergy strategy starting with “clean fuels hubs,” in Prince George and Kamloops.