B.C.’s forestry collapse is devastating communities across the province, with provincial policy failures identified as the primary cause. But the dysfunction is causing more than economic losses. It is also destroying two things which are arguably priceless: old growth forests, and a free, fair, and open market.
Old growth logging continues under licences the government has legal authority to restrict. Yet reportedly, less than half of the 2.6 million hectares identified by its own technical advisory panel as most at risk have actually been deferred.
Forest protection advocates point to Canfor and West Fraser as the top two private companies logging old growth. What they omit is that Canfor’s tenures were transferred to two bands in 2024, months after West Fraser’s tenures were combined with a different band’s months earlier—tenures the province subsequently increased by more than 2,000 per cent in 2025. In the same timeframe, the mills these companies used to operate have closed at a steady clip.
Restructuring forestry tenures to broaden participation and competition is a legitimate policy objective, but the ministry’s approach has created an uneven landscape of new risks and inequities. Shifting forestry licenses from existing tenure holders to band-affiliated entities is a deliberate outcome of the B.C. government’s adherence to the Declaration Act and Minister Parmar’s triple political mandate to ramp up logging, conserve more old growth, and increase Indigenous participation in forestry.
The 2004 Supreme Court of Canada Haida judgment determined consultation is triggered even in cases where a band merely claims an Aboriginal title to land. In the absence of legal proof, such a claim is said to already possess an “economic interest in the land” even though the claim has not been proven in court or settled through a treaty.
Building on this decision, a 2011 BC Supreme Court quashed a ministerial decision after finding the government failed to adequately consult a band that had an interest in developing a hydro power project within a nature conservancy in its claimed territory. The case established that conservation decisions which foreclose economic opportunity in a band’s claimed territory trigger the Crown’s duty to consult, and therefore the requirement for accommodation.
While the Crown argued that preserving land in a nature conservancy is inherently neutral or even beneficial to Aboriginal interests, the judge disagreed and instead stipulated that “proposed conservation measures could have an adverse effect on claimed aboriginal rights and title, as they may limit future uses of land.”
Read the full article at Northern Beat: BC forestry policies destroy priceless values and bias the regulatory system.