![\"Minister](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/f32184221c8cffa2838b2010a870d2f4.jpeg\")
Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson responds to a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 2, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Sean Kilpatrick – The Canadian Press \u00b7 The Canadian Press <\/p>\n
VICTORIA \u2014 Canada’s natural resources minister says the challenges facing forestry go beyond Trump-era tariffs and instead are structural, as he unveiled close to $130 million in funding for 56 projects across the country.<\/p>\n
Tim Hodgson, who is in Langford B.C. to meet forest ministers from across Canada, also released a report suggesting homegrown problems including unstable access to fibre and lack of domestic demand are threatening the industry with an “existential crisis.”<\/p>\n
He says the additional funding is on top of the various supports worth $2 billion, which the federal government has announced since August 2025 to help the sector remain competitive and resilient in the face of American tariffs.<\/p>\n
But the minister also says the sector finds itself at a “turning point” and that despite federal support, more than a dozen sawmills employing 2,000 workers have closed since August.<\/p>\n
Hodgson says the disruptions facing the industry have also led to 40 curtailments, with 1,000 temporary job losses.<\/p>\n
While forestry has been a mainstay of Canada’s economy and the lifeblood of many communities, Hodgson says the industry is in a crisis, and needs to change.<\/p>\n
“(Rather) than simply extending the sector’s life support, we now must challenge and support it to transform into a modern, thriving industry that can build Canada’s future and achieve sustained, independent prosperity,” he says.<\/p>\n
Hodgson also released a report by a task force charged with finding ways to restructure and retool the sector.<\/p>\n
The report says that while external pressures, most notably sustained U.S. softwood lumber duties, have deepened industry challenges, the “most significant barriers to competitiveness are homegrown.”<\/p>\n
It says that these obstacles include unstable access to affordable fibre, excessive regulations, persistent underinvestment in manufacturing, weak capacity to innovate, and inadequate domestic demand for wood-based products.<\/p>\n
“Absent immediate, co-ordinated, and decisive action, the forest sector faces an existential risk,” it says.<\/p>\n
U.S. duties and tariffs on softwood lumber add up to around 35 per cent, but it is not clear yet where the U.S. government will eventually land.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson responds to a question during question period in the House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,29700,3203,400,989,9394],"class_list":["post-73162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-existential-crisis","tag-parliament-hill","tag-tariffs","tag-the-canadian-press","tag-tim-hodgson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}