Earlier this month, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said her country had oil stockpiles for 254 days and agreed to release a record amount. Since then, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps closed the Strait of Hormuz following U.S.-Israeli airstrikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran is among the world’s larger oil producers, and the Strait of Hormuz is its waterborne backyard. When Iran closes it and major commercial shipping through it craters, it is a reminder that energy security is paramount and can be vulnerable.
In British Columbia, Premier David Eby walks and talks like he understands the global landscape. He has enthusiastically pitched B.C. as a reliable supplier of natural gas and critical minerals to the world.
Like other Asian countries, Japan itself is not an energy self-sufficient country and has a hunger for fuels like LNG to keep its economy going. Eby has jumped at making that possibility a reality by backing Indigenous ownership for LNG and meeting with Asian government representatives.
Eby told Asian governments that they shouldn’t be looking at the United States right now for LNG if they want reliable energy. He’s tried to position B.C. as a direct, affordable supplier of energy in the Pacific. Other resource sectors have received similar treatment.
Critical minerals are at a premium right now, especially copper and gold, and Eby has been a willing partner to a few major mining corporations, though junior firms report being left out.
In January, Eby guaranteed exploration fixed permitting times of 40 to 140 days depending on the scale and complexity of the project and said he would back it with $3 million in funding. Current permit times take an average of 270 days and Eby’s government has yet to deliver on either promise, but at least he’s acknowledged the industry is important and the situation needs correcting.
The same can’t be said for forestry.
BC government pitches LNG and mining
One of B.C.’s oldest industries, forestry always seems to come last on the list of priorities. Announcements on are dominated by news of mill closures, job losses, and overall industry decline. The whole sector is in a state of crisis, but it is treated as background noise by the NDP.
On matters of LNG, there is far more urgency projected by the provincial government. When the province wants to put on a show of economic confidence, it touts its efforts to help LNG and minerals, and even presents like it has always been a fossil fuel champion.
While in Japan, Eby tried to sell B.C.’s “simple” geography as a selling point. The premier told reporters Japanese firms appreciate the shorter distances to ship LNG from B.C. ports across the Pacific to Japan, rather than having to go through the Panama Canal to get LNG from the Gulf Coast off Texas.
International volatility has strengthened B.C.’s LNG, mining and energy sales pitch to India as well. LNG was pitched as a way to reduce carbon intensity and smog, and mining as a strategic resource in the national interest.
Over $750 million will be spent by the mining industry in 2025, a 36 per cent improvement over 2024. The numbers illustrate the momentum of mining and mineral exploration in B.C., although mining representatives stress that most of that investment is in the biggest mines, and there continues to be a scarcity of investment in smaller companies.
Northwest mining developments are lauded in government press releases as opportunities for “tens of billions of dollars in investment” and “thousands of good paying jobs.” The government has pledged to align approval processes with Ottawa’s goal of reducing the approval process for major projects to “one project, one review.”
Forestry comes last as mills close and jobs disappear
By contrast, forestry gets only statements, reviews, and more processes that do nothing to staunch the bleeding suffered by the industry.
The numbers tell the brutal story.
In 2025 alone, B.C. lost three major operations, the Crofton pulp mill on Vancouver Island, the West Fraser sawmill in 100 Mile House, and a Drax pellet mill in Williams Lake.
Since 2022, 15,000 forest sector jobs have disappeared. Since 2023, 21 mills have closed. On the B.C. coast, alone, 10 mills have permanently closed since 2018, resulting in 5,800 job losses, according to the Truck Loggers Association.
The mayor of North Cowichan said the Crofton closure meant 370 direct jobs were lost, along with up to $800,000 in industrial taxes.
The sector losses rack up with barely a flicker from government.
Too much change, too fast, warns industry group
According to some industry sources, access to fibre is one of the areas where the provincial government can have an effect on forestry. In 2025, the Council of Forest Industries found that the budget projected the wood harvest declining to 29 million cubic metres by the 2027–2028 fiscal year, despite the province committing to 45 million.
After the 2026 budget was presented last month, COFI lamented that the projected harvest of 29 million cubic metres for the next three years was well below the allowable annual cut. COFI warned that the forestry sector’s survival depends on increasing harvest levels via predictable access to cuttable wood.
Since 2018, the province introduced more than 43 measures for forestry, including new policies, plans, laws, review processes and reports that affect the sector. In the meantime, the fibre supply crisis has only worsened, as evidenced by the ongoing string of closures.
COFI President Kim Haakstad warned there has been too much change settling into the system, and no real push for regulatory efficiencies to clean up processes and make them more transparent.
The province has tried to ameliorate the situation by expanding the role of B.C. Timber Sales, a provincial organization that manages approximately 20 per cent of B.C.’s annual allowable cut. In the past year, the government published 54 recommendations, another forestry review, and community forest expansions in Vanderhoof, Fraser Lake, and Fort St. James.
While COFI welcomed the sense of urgency, they noted that B.C. Timber Sales has a history of underperformance, and warned that expanding its mandate without addressing its performance capabilities will only worsen the current challenges.
‘Tax on a tax’ will put forestry further behind
The latest budget has only brought more bad news. In a joint statement with the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, with COFI among the signatories, the GVBOT urged the province to scrap an expansion of the provincial sales tax to professional services, including a new seven per cent PST applied broadly, with a partial 30 per cent tax base applied to architectural, engineering, and geoscience work.
The GVBOT called the PST increase a “tax on a tax” that will swell administrative burdens, and raise the cost of major projects. The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses has estimated that compliance costs will amount to $7,000 per year per employee. For sectors that are bogged down in input costs and delays, the province is choosing to tax the very services required to plan, permit, and build.
For forestry, it will only put it further behind its sibling industries in the natural resource sector.
LNG touted while the backbone of rural economy shrinks
It is easy to see who the favourites of the current government are.
Eby celebrates LNG as a model industry and devotes millions of dollars and significant time to help build major projects like Cedar LNG and sell B.C. LNG abroad.
Mining is touted as “nation-building” and given written guarantees of timeline certainty, while critical minerals are rightfully treated as a strategic necessity.
And forestry, the historic backbone of the rural economy, is left in a dreadful loop of shrinking harvests, administrative bloat, and more closures that gut small town economies.
The current crisis in the Strait of Hormuz should spark a renewed push to develop B.C.’s capacity as a reliable energy supplier in a volatile global landscape. Forestry should not be left behind as LNG and mining are feted as the future.
Recently, the government conducted two separate reviews of the forestry sector. What the industry really needs is sustained attention and genuine support, not another review.