Forestry has been one of the three economic pillars of Campbell River. In the article that follows, Mayor Kermit Dahl states that ’70% of what the city does is resource-related, and their sales in the previous year were down by just over 20%.’ While many do not agree with the industry practise of cutting big tree old growth – the iconic subset which often comes to mind when hearing the words ‘old growth’ – there is much more to the story. The following article consists of select gleanings from statements made by Mayor Dahl and several MPs (including Aaron Gunn) at a recent meeting of the federal government’s Standing Committee on Natural Resources.
State of the Forests
Kermit Dahl: Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Kermit Dahl. I’m the mayor of the City of Campbell River, on northern Vancouver Island. I also serve as chair of the Campbell River business advisory team, originally formed in response to the U.S. tariffs, but now a strong voice for natural resource communities. In addition, I represent the Alliance of Resource Communities, a coalition of municipal leaders advocating for sustainable resource development and highlighting how provincial and federal policies are impacting investment and jobs.
Campbell River is the forestry hub of north Vancouver Island, supporting a significant share of harvesting operations. Our community feels every ripple in the forestry sector, whether it’s growth or decline. Unfortunately, across British Columbia, we are witnessing a systemic dismantling of a once-thriving industry. Ten years ago, forestry contributed roughly $1.5 billion in stumpage fees to the provincial government. Today, that figure has fallen to about $550 million, as reported in the 2024-25 provincial budget.
The coastal allowable annual cut, which was set at 14.4 million cubic metres, has seen harvesting of just over 4.5 million cubic metres to date. The provincial allowable annual cut follows a similar sharp downward trajectory. Both economics and provincial and federal policies have been identified as the chief causes of this lack of harvesting.
Since 2018, nine coastal mills have closed. This loss of capacity is driven by a combination of significant provincial and federal policy constraints, U.S. softwood lumber duties and recent section 232 tariffs, all of which have weakened competitiveness and investor confidence. Since 2022, the forestry sector has lost roughly 5,400 jobs, yet 40% of coastal pulp mill fibre is now being imported from the United States due to a chip supply shortage created by eliminating many of the mills in our coastal area.
This is not just an abstract issue. It affects real businesses and families. In my own company, when harvesting slows, revenue drops dramatically. It impacts local spending and community stability. When a contractor can’t keep his crews working, those families face uncertainty, and that uncertainty ripples through every sector, from retail to housing. These are not statistics; they represent livelihoods, mortgages and futures.
Too many regulations
Forestry isn’t the only sector facing challenges. Mining, energy and aquaculture are in the same situation. Companies are dealing with too many overlapping rules, long and unpredictable approval processes and rising costs that make it hard to invest. Aquaculture businesses worry about whether they’ll keep their licences and about new federal rules that create uncertainty for coastal communities.
These delays aren’t about protecting the environment. They’re about complicated bureaucracy and unclear decision-making. Indigenous partnerships, which should be central to development, are slowed by confusing jurisdictions and inconsistent consultation, leaving communities frustrated and opportunities lost. Meanwhile, other countries, like those in Scandinavia, South America and the U.S., are moving faster and are attracting investment and skilled workers. Every month of delay means fewer jobs, less tax revenue and less confidence in Canada’s ability to compete globally.
The 2025 federal budget includes welcome commitments of $1.2 billion to forestry infrastructure and $13 billion for construction. However, in British Columbia, uncertainty around fibre access and regulatory instability means companies may hesitate to invest. Our province could lead Canada’s economic renewal through forestry and other resource industries, but that requires coordinated federal-provincial leadership to restore confidence. Without that alignment, these federal investments risk being underutilized, leaving communities like mine without the opportunity to benefit from national growth initiatives.
What is needed
British Columbians overwhelmingly support responsible resource development. To sustain that trust and to strengthen the strategic industry, we need progress on four fronts.
We need a fair, long-term softwood lumber agreement with the United States to reduce uncertainty and to stabilize trade.
We need streamlined regulatory processes that maintain high environmental standards while eliminating duplication and delay. Right now, companies face overlapping requirements that add cost without improving outcomes.
We need timely and accessible federal support to stabilize operations and attract new investment. Programs must be designed for speed and clarity because when mills close, communities don’t have years to wait.
We need to help local economies access and develop new markets.
Forestry has long been a cornerstone of British Columbia’s economy and can remain a pillar of Canada’s low-carbon future, but only if we create the conditions for success. This is about more than economics. It’s about sustaining rural communities, supporting indigenous partnerships and ensuring Canada remains competitive in global markets. If we fail to act, we risk losing not only jobs but the expertise and infrastructure that underpins sustainable resource development.
Impact on Campbell River
Aaron Gunn (North Island Powell River, CPC): Thank you, Mayor Dahl, for making the journey out from our shared home of Campbell River.
You talked a lot in your comments about the importance of forestry to the economy of Campbell River, the north island and, indeed, the entire province. As mayor of Campbell River, have you noticed the real-world effects of the industry’s downturn and challenges on families, businesses and individuals in Campbell River?
Kermit Dahl: Yes, for sure. I’ve lived in Campbell River for 40 years. My kids have been born and raised in Campbell River, all of their friends have been, and we see a lot of that younger generation, who have less seniority, being laid off or suffering with the curtailments that are happening. Yes, we see it every day.
I just finished a year-end financial and saw for the second time in 15 years a decline in our annual sales. Seventy per cent of what we do is resource-related, and our sales in the previous year were down by just over 20%.
Aaron Gunn: You’re obviously a small business owner in town. When people think of forestry, they think about the big mills. They think about the loggers out in the bush.
Can you talk about all the other businesses and people who make their livings indirectly from the forest industry in a community like Campbell River?
Kermit Dahl: In Campbell River, every business there is supported by logging. All of my trucks say, “my family is fed by the forest industry”. The forest industry is what supports our entire community. Whether you’re selling clothing or operating a restaurant, every single thing is dependent on the logging community having continuous work so people can afford to go out and spend money, whether they’re buying cars, houses, clothes or pizza at Boston Pizza. Every business is dependent on that happening.
Mill Closures
Aaron Gunn: How has the uncertainty created over fibre access—basically the predictable and sustainable ability to go out and cut down trees to feed the mills—contributed, in your view, to the downturn of the industry and the struggles that the industry currently faces?
Kermit Dahl: We were one of the first areas, or we were the first area, to lose our sawmills. Whether Gold River or Campbell River, it was that area. When we can’t supply wood now, it affects the more central to southern part of the island. Our wood is what feeds their mills, so when we don’t have access to fibre, those mills and their employees go down for unpredicted and unknown lengths of time. It puts out a lot of workers who are in a completely different area. They don’t even know there’s going to be a shortage of wood, because they’re not seeing the lack of logging trucks moving up and down the highway, until one day they just get told that they’re going to shut the mill down for the next eight weeks—or six months or whatever—to build up inventories.
Aaron Gunn: You recently said in public comments that the coastal forest industry was maybe just one mill closure away from total collapse. Can you expand on that and the interconnectedness of the entire industry?
Kermit Dahl: When you lose a sawmill…the sawmill feeds the pulp mill. We’re already bringing in 40% of the chips from the U.S. to feed pulp mills so they can continue to run. In Campbell River, I don’t know, 17 years ago, our sawmill went down, and within about 18 months our pulp mill was gone. They need to have the stable feed of hog fuel and wood chips product, sawdust, to be able to afford to produce pulp and paper. If we lose another mill or two, it’s going to be no time before we can’t afford to continue to run. The margins are too tight in pulp and paper.
Environmental Groups
(editor’s note: Several of the following statements appear to be misleading. Not all old growth is equal. In a recent interview with Cortes Currents, Karen Price, co-chair of BC’s recent Old Growth Strategic Review panel stated most of the province’s old growth are smaller and less productive. She claims “Less than 415,000 hectares; 3% of old growth” is the ‘big tree’ old growth which environmental groups are striving to protect. This distinction is quite clear in the Old Growth Strategic Review’s report (2020) and literature from environmental groups like the Wilderness Committee and Sierra Club BC. When Mayor Dahl refers to 11 million hectares of old growth, in the passage that follows, he includes the 3% big tree which environmentalists are concerned about and the 97% less productive old growth.)
Aaron Gunn: You spoke about how we were basically undercutting the total allowable cut, both on the coast and across the entire province. As you know, on Vancouver Island, we have a lot of very active environmental groups that are always proclaiming that forest companies are about to cut down the last true ancient forest or mystical forest. They’re always changing their terminology.
What’s your view? Are we running out of trees to cut down on Vancouver Island and across British Columbia, or do you think we have a very responsible and sustainable industry that could be maintained for generations to come?
Kermit Dahl: We do for sure. We haven’t been achieving 50% of our allowable cut provincially.
Putting that aside, we have 11 million hectares of old-growth timber standing. That’s equivalent to about two times the size of Nova Scotia. That’s not just the protected. That’s 11 million cubic hectares of standing timber that’s in areas that have never even been seen by humans.
(editor’s note: The following statement that ‘some of these environmental groups that probably have never been to the north Island or Campbell River’ is prejudicial, unsubstanitated and most likely totally untrue. However Gunn’s statement may be more accurate when it comes to interactions with city officials from Campbell River.)
Aaron Gunn: What message would you say to some of these environmental groups that probably have never been to the north Island or Campbell River and spend their time in downtown Victoria or downtown Vancouver?
Kermit Dahl: They should come to Campbell River, for sure.
The Chair: That is your time. Thank you both. We go now to another British Columbian, Mr. McKinnon.
More on mill closures
Ron McKinnon (Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, Lib.): As I mentioned before the meeting, at one point in my life, I spent quite a lot of time in Campbell River. It’s a very nice town.
Welcome to Mr. Gunn, who’s joining us in this committee.
You mentioned the closure of the pulp mill at Elk Falls. You say the main reason for that was a lack of feedstock or of product for it. I’m wondering if there are any other factors there.
It used to be a major employer in the community. How has the community responded and adapted since its closure?
Kermit Dahl: Like I said, the pulp and paper market is really tight. It was tight 15 years ago.
Not long before we lost our sawmill…. I’m a Rotarian. We had a presentation by Catalyst. The president of Catalyst said that, nationally, we needed to lose about one paper machine a year just because of the way markets were going and the lack of a need for paper as we go to a more electronic way of communicating, losing newspapers and that kind of thing. Not long after that, we lost our sawmill. There needed to be a pulp mill that was lost and ours just lost the mill that was feeding it, which made it convenient for the market to shut that mill down.
Ron McKinnon: How has your community adapted to that? Does it rely more heavily on forestry in general or some other…?
Fishing has kind of waned over the recent decades, so I should think forestry is still a major employer.
Kermit Dahl: Forestry is still a major employer, but a lot of the people who lost their jobs in the sawmill and pulp mill moved on to Fort McMurray and oil field work, remotely—away from Campbell River. We see a lot of people at the airport there, commuting back and forth. They’re working 14 and seven, if they’re lucky.
It took a lot of people out of our community. I flew out sitting next to a guy whose family had lived in Campbell River for a really long time. He moved to Fort McMurray 15 years ago.
Networking with other municipalities
Ron McKinnon: I note that back in June, you beseeched resource-dependent communities to join a collective advocacy movement.
Have you had any uptake on that? How has that been proceeding?
Kermit Dahl: The uptake has been incredible. We started out doing Zoom and Teams meetings from our offices in Campbell River to other communities. Then, in September, we held a networking event at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, where we had hoped that 50 to 60 people would show up. We had over 200 people attend. We’ve continued to have a great positive response.
We’re trying to get the message across to more metropolitan areas, to show them how connected…and why what we do in the urban and rural areas is so important to them. For example, with aquaculture, the food is produced in the Lower Mainland. If aquaculture gets shut down, they lose lots of jobs in that area. It’s the same with a lot of the wood that gets cut in many areas. It gets towed down the Fraser and gets dealt with in mills in those areas. The Georgia strait is where the head offices for Western Forest Products and Interfor are. What happens in our remote, resource-based communities is super important to the city dwellers. We’ve tried, through the alliance, to get that across to many mayors and councillors.
Ron McKinnon: I also have a letter from you to Premier Eby, beseeching him to take more action on the regulatory slowdowns and so forth. What sorts of places does this kind of advocacy intend to focus on to drive change? I note, of course, that forestry regulation is provincial. I’m just wondering how we as a federal government could help.
Softwood Lumber Dispute
Kermit Dahl: I think the most important thing that you, as the federal government, can do to help would be to get a softwood lumber deal. That would be number one.
Ron McKinnon: That’s something we’ve been working on for about 30 years. If you have any brainwaves there to help us, that would be helpful too.
Kermit Dahl: The second thing you could do would be to get the softwood lumber support package out the door now to the companies, workers and contractors that are in desperate need.
Third, fund first nations tenure purchases and capacity training to speed up the tenure transition. We’ve seen locally, in our area, with the success of the We Wai Kai Nation, that nations are showing success as tenure holders. It’s a strong step towards reconciliation, and first nations have shown that they want to control timber harvesting in their areas.
Diversify Markets
The fourth thing you could do would be to help diversify our markets for export. The U.S. market is of course important, but to become more stable, we must not be dependent on the U.S.
India has a population of 1.44 billion people. They are seeing massive urbanization, with millions of new housing units under construction. South Korea is smaller but experiencing a massive growth in mid-rise, four- and five-storey construction. We need to stabilize our relationships with Vietnam, the Philippines and China. China has a population of 1.41 billion. They all have a building boom of some type that wood construction would be good for.
The Chair: Thank you to you both. [Translation] The floor is yours, Mr. Simard.
Mario Simard (Jonquière, Que – BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Dahl, thank you for being with us. I’m from Quebec, specifically Saguenay—Lac‑Saint‑Jean, one of the most active forestry regions in Quebec. I completely understand what it’s like for you.
In response to my fellow member Mr. McKinnon’s question, you talked about the drawn-out dispute with the United States. It’s clear that, without a resolution, things won’t get better for the forestry sector.
Buyback 50% of Duties held by US
I read in the news that the minister, Dominic LeBlanc, was in British Columbia for a forestry summit on November 3.
A proposal has been going around for a while now. It was raised publicly and has been discussed during the committee’s proceedings. I wanted to know what you thought.
Right now, $11 billion in countervailing and anti-dumping duties is being held by the U.S. Clearly, 80% of $11 billion is a big chunk of money for the government to fork out to forestry producers so they can keep their operations going. It was something a number of people had initially asked for. However, realizing how much money was at stake, people came up with a compromise, which is that the federal government buy back 50% of countervailing and anti-dumping duties from producers at the end of every month. That way, producers could maintain their facilities. I’m not sure whether the proposal made its way around your neck of the woods, but I’d like to know whether you think it could help. Would it be an acceptable solution while we wait for the dispute to be settled?
Like me, you probably saw government communications indicating that the government’s negotiating priorities vis-à-vis the U.S. are steel, energy and aluminum. Softwood lumber isn’t one of them, so we have to find a way to keep people in the sector employed, to keep producers in business.
Does a 50% buyback at the end of every month seem like a viable solution to you?
Kermit Dahl: I’m really not familiar with any of what happened during the meeting on November 3. It was held in Vancouver. There hasn’t been a lot of coverage on the west coast, other than what the forestry minister has had to say, which is that the federal government is going to allocate funds towards a transition for forestry in B.C. I’m sorry, but I’m just not familiar with that.
(Skipping ahead to another comment)
Wood Chips & Mill Closures
Kermit Dahl: The tariffs have been bad for, as someone mentioned, already 30 years or more. However, since April 2025, we have seen six major sawmills permanently or indefinitely close, representing 1,720 direct jobs in British Columbia.
(Lastly to this exchange)
Jonathan Rowe (Terra Nova—The Peninsulas, NL – CPC) Yes, bioenergy is something that is becoming big in Newfoundland. Some buildings are actually transitioning away from home heating fuel to bioenergy, furnaces that use chips. It’s a good industry.
Speaking of chips, Mayor Dahl, you mentioned that there’s actually a shortage of chips to your pulp and paper mills, and they come from the States. Why is there a shortage of chips? Is it because of the actual cost of foresting? The price of fuel has gone up. There are permitting restrictions. Why is there a shortage of chips in Canada? You mentioned large, old forests. I’m just curious if there are more reasons there.
Kermit Dahl: The main reason we have a shortage on the coast is that we’ve lost, I think, 44 sawmills in the last fifteenish years. Those sawmills produced the chips that the pulp mills used to produce energy and pulp and paper.
Jonathan Rowe: There’s a synergy there between the two industries, and one without the other is lacking. What we’re seeing in Newfoundland is kind of the opposite. Our pulp and paper mills are closing because of the lack of paper, and our sawmills are having difficulties finding something to do with the chips. We’ve actually had fires in my region because of sawdust piles collecting and actually combusting.
Forest Fires
Speaking of fires, you talked about how B.C. has some old forests, and what we’re seeing now in Newfoundland is that our forests are getting very old. The forestry industry is saying that they go in to try to get logs or lumber for logs, and the wood is almost too old for that. Do you think that increases the risk of fires in B.C. and Newfoundland?
Can you explain the importance of the forestry industry in preventing fires?
Kermit Dahl: It certainly increases the risk if you’re not taking the fuel out. It’s a continuous change—taking the timber out, sending it to the mills, replanting and starting the cycle over again. That reduces the risk, and you can build fire breaks by engineered plans for how you’re logging the cut blocks. On the east coast we do primarily, and almost exclusively, clear-cut logging. We take everything out, and then clean it up and replant. It makes a fire break from one area to the next.
The 30 by 30 target for forests
Jonathan Rowe: Do you think that having 30 by 30, where we’re protecting 30% of the forest by 2030 and 50% of the land and forest by 2050, will significantly increase the risk of fire in B.C. and Newfoundland, and across the country?
Kermit Dahl: Without a doubt.
Links of Interest:
- Electronic recording from the Standing Committee on Natural Resources meeting, Thursday, November 20, 2025 – Hansard
- Interactive World Forest Map set to area around Campbell River (Saplings cannot be seen by satellites so gain and loss categories are set to end in 2020) – Global Forest Watch
- Are BC’s Forests Getting Closer to the Brink? – Cortes Currents
- Articles about, or mentioning, forests
Top image credit: Gains and losses in tree coverage 2000-2020 – courtesy Global Forest Watch
Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:
To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency:
- Daily, (articles posted during the last 24 hours) – cortescurrents-daily+subscribe@cortes.groups.io
- Weekly Digest cortescurrents – cortescurrents-weekly+subscribe@cortes.groups.io