B.C. Mill Closures Are Not Just a Tariff Story
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B.C. Mill Closures Are Not Just a Tariff Story
In Crofton, Domtar’s pulp mill closure hit about 350 workers and removed one of North Cowichan’s biggest economic anchors. The municipality says the mill was its single largest taxpayer, contributing roughly $5 million a year in property taxes — money that helps fund local services.
And Crofton is not a one-off.
North Cowichan is now also dealing with the extended closure of Western Forest Products’ Chemainus sawmill, affecting about 150 employees, while the municipality openly warns about risks to the local tax base and wider economy. That is what a sector crisis looks like in real life: fewer paycheques, weaker municipal finances, and more stress on families and small businesses.
There has been media coverage, but it has been fragmented. Canadian Press/CityNews covered the Crofton closure, and Global has covered tariff pressure and government summits on forestry. But most of the deeper structural analysis has come from trade and industry outlets, not headline nightly news.
That matters, because this is not just a “Trump tariffs” story.
Tariffs are real, and they hurt. But industry leaders are also saying the crisis is being driven by “made-in-B.C.” structural problems — especially high costs, regulatory burden, and declining access to economically viable fibre. At the Truck Loggers Association convention, Peter Lister said more than 10 major coastal mills have closed since 2018, with over 5,800 truck jobs lost, and he directly tied the decline to harvest levels and policy choices in B.C. COFI’s Kim Haakstad added that the province has lost 15,000 direct, indirect, and induced jobs since 2022.
That is not social media rhetoric. Those are numbers being cited publicly by sector leaders on a panel that included COFI and the B.C. Pulp & Paper Coalition.
The fibre issue is central. Lister pointed to permit costs rising from about $4 to $14 per cubic metre for one member, and said that at roughly 30 million cubic metres harvested, that implies hundreds of millions in additional costs. He also stated plainly that a lack of fibre was the reason Crofton closed. Whether one agrees with every industry claim or not, government cannot ignore that warning.
And the fiscal impact goes beyond payroll.
B.C.’s own budget documents show how exposed the province is to forestry conditions. The 2026 fiscal plan assumes harvest volumes around 29 million cubic metres, and notes that normal swings in forest-product prices can move stumpage revenue by roughly $260 million (and total natural resource revenue by even more). In other words, the province itself is telling us forestry volatility is a major revenue risk.
The longer trend is worse. B.C.’s official “State of the Forest Sector” reports show forest revenue at about $1.924 billion in 2022, then down to about $694.2 million in 2023. That is a collapse of more than $1.2 billion in one year. Whatever the mix of causes — markets, tariffs, beetle damage, regulation, fibre access — the hit to the provincial balance sheet is real.
So yes, tariffs matter. But anyone claiming tariffs are the whole story is asking the public to ignore the structural side of the crisis.
And when governments ignore the structural causes, communities pay twice: first through job losses, then through weaker local tax bases, service cuts, or tax hikes to make up the difference.
Forestry towns know this pattern. A mill closure is not just a labour issue. It is a municipal finance issue, a housing issue, a family issue, and a regional economic issue.
B.C. needs an honest accounting of what is killing competitiveness: what is global, what is federal, and what is provincial. If policy decisions inside B.C. are making fibre harder to access and more expensive to process, then those decisions need to be revisited — fast.
Because once a mill town starts hollowing out, the damage is not easy to reverse.
And by the time Victoria admits there is a problem, the parking lots are already half empty
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