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Canada’s Forest Sector Responds to Misleading Report

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The legacy media is widely distributing an article outlining a report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council claiming Canada’s forestry sector emits even more carbon than Alberta’s oilsands.  Not wishing to undergo the same vilification as the oil sector, the Forest Products Association of Canada is quickly countering the report with this article.

Article Submitted by the Forest Products Association of Canada

Earlier today, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Nature Canada jointly released a misleading and damaging report on Canada’s GHG emissions. Derek Nighbor, President and CEO, Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) issued the following statement in response:

Last week, economists from the Royal Bank of Canada confirmed their expectation that Canada will enter a recession in the first quarter of 2023. This presents unique challenges for working families in rural and northern Canada where economic prospects are often limited to a few key industries like agriculture, energy, mining, and forestry.

In hundreds of these communities across the country – from Prince George, BC to Corner Brook, NL – the forest sector is a central economic driver and provides jobs to over 200,000 Canadians. Beyond its economic contributions, Canadian forestry is known globally for its responsible harvest practices, high quality products, and its ability to help build a lower carbon economy. Canadian foresters also play an essential role in mitigating growing fire risks, protecting carbon rich wetlands, building with renewable, carbon-storing wood products, and creating environmentally friendly products from what would otherwise be wood waste.

Nordic countries show us how boreal forests can be managed to maximize carbon storage, even in a warming climate. Although their forests are much smaller, Finland and Sweden harvest six to eight times the timber volume per forested hectare than Canada does. At the same time, the net annual increase in stored carbon in Sweden’s forest is so large it reduces national GHG emissions by 70%. These Nordic governments have done something that Canada has not. In developing their climate plans, these leaders have worked with key industries like forestry to build sector-specific plans to maximize environmental and economic outcomes.

While we were disappointed to see another misleading report on forestry issued by the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Nature Canada, we were not surprised. Both NRDC and Nature Canada fundraise on their anti-Canadian forestry campaign rhetoric.

It’s worth noting that staff in NRDC’s New York, Washington, and San Francisco offices suggest they care about Canada’s forests and Canadian workers, even as they actively lobby multiple US states to encourage state legislators to restrict Canadian forest products coming into those states. For reasons that are difficult to understand, Nature Canada has chosen to be a willing partner.

Let’s be clear. Canada has a forest carbon problem that is caused by the worsening natural disturbance patterns we are seeing through drought, pest outbreaks, and catastrophic wildland fire. It’s a growing problem impacting forest health and resiliency, human health and community safety, and we urgently need constructive solutions – not deliberately misleading attacks.

FPAC continues to call on the federal government to follow the Nordic examples and work with our sector to develop a comprehensive plan for Canadian forestry, even as we contribute to the federal National Adaptation Strategy (NAS), which is a key deliverable and discussion matter at the upcoming COP 27 global climate conference next month in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Canadian forestry needs an NAS that minimizes climate-driven disturbance by actively reducing disturbance risk and supporting forest operations that maximize long-term carbon storage performance. This means increased timber harvests that value carbon and forest health – and the creation of new markets for low-grade wood fibre, including via thinning and residual biomass. It also means more forestry – not less. Forestry that will accelerate economic reconciliation with Indigenous communities, keep communities safer from fire risks, support biodiversity conservation and important ecosystem values, and provide good-paying jobs and careers in the rural and northern Canadian communities that desperately need them.

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It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

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From the  Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers

The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.

Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.

These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.

Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.

In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.

Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.

According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.

Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.

A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.

Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.

Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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2025 Federal Election

Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s

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By Gage Haubrich

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is planning to borrow more money than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

That’s an odd plan for a former banker because the federal government is already spending more on debt interest payments than it spends on health-care transfers to the provinces.

Let’s take a deeper look at Carney’s plan.

Carney says that his government would “spend less, invest more.”

At first glance, that might sound better than the previous decade of massive deficits and increasing debt, but does that sound like a real change?

Because if you open a thesaurus, you’ll find that “spend” and “invest” are synonyms, they mean the same thing.

And Carney’s platform shows it. Carney plans to increase government spending by $130 billion. He plans to increase the federal debt by $225 billion over the next four years. That’s about $100 billion more than Trudeau was planning borrow over the same period, according to the most recent Fall Economic Statement.

Carney is planning to waste $5.6 billion more on debt interest charges than Trudeau. Interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion per week.

The platform claims that Carney will run a budget surplus in 2028, but that’s nonsense. Because once you include the $48 billion of spending in Carney’s “capital” budget, the tiny surplus disappears, and taxpayers are stuck with more debt.

And that’s despite planning to take even more money from Canadians in years ahead. Carney’s platform shows that his carbon tariff, another carbon tax on Canadians, will cost taxpayers $500 million.

The bottom line is that government spending, no matter what pile it is put into, is just government spending. And when the government spends too much, that means it must borrow more money, and taxpayers have to pay the interest payments on that irresponsible borrowing.

Canadians don’t even believe that Carney can follow through on his watered-down plan. A majority of Canadians are skeptical that Carney will balance the operational budget in three years, according to Leger polling.

All Carney’s plan means for Canadians is more borrowing and higher debt. And taxpayers can’t afford anymore debt.

When the Liberals were first elected the debt was $616 billion. It’s projected to reach almost $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, that means the debt has more than doubled in the last decade.

Every single Canadian’s individual share of the federal debt averages about $30,000.

Interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. That’s more than the government takes in GST from Canadians. That means every time you go to the grocery store, fill up your car with gas, or buy almost anything else, all that federal sales tax you pay isn’t being used for anything but paying for the government’s poor financial decisions.

Creative accounting is not the solution to get the government’s fiscal house in order. It’s spending cuts. And Carney even says this.

“The federal government has been spending too much,” said Carney. He then went on to acknowledge the huge spending growth of the government over the last decade and the ballooning of the federal bureaucracy. A serious plan to balance the budget and pay down debt includes cutting spending and slashing bureaucracy.

But the Conservatives aren’t off the hook here either. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will balance the budget “as soon as possible,” but hasn’t told taxpayers when that is.

More debt today means higher taxes tomorrow. That’s because every dollar borrowed by the federal government must be paid back plus interest. Any party that says it wants to make life more affordable also needs a plan to start paying back the debt.

Taxpayers need a government that will commit to balancing the budget for real and start paying back debt, not one that is continuing to pile on debt and waste billions on interest charges.

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