What Wood for BC NDP's "Mass Timber" Homebuilding Plans? 🪚🪵
- cz1635
- Feb 1
- 3 min read
By: HomesNotBankMachines
British Columbia’s housing‑crisis rhetoric is colliding in real time with a forestry‑sector meltdown—one the BC NDP has presided over, not fixed. While the government chants mass timber, more homes, more jobs, its own ever-changing regulatory policies are helping shutter lumber mills across the province, throttling the supply of wood to build any of these proposed homes.
Growing US tariffs on forestry are the icing on this collapsing cake.
The result is not a green revolution in wood‑first construction; it’s record mill closures, thousands of family‑supporting jobs gone in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Meanwhile, a lumber‑starved province is forced to import what it used to harvest itself.
The outlook is so dire that even former BC NDP Premier Glen Clark warned the provincial government at a Business Council of BC Summit to stop making changes on land-use planning and let industry catch up. However, taking good advice or heeding the concerns of business is not a BC NDP strength as they recently disbanded their business advisory group roundtable. Sobering Statistics: Mills closing, lumber stuck in the forest
Business in Vancouver News reports:
Since 2022, 15,000 forest sector jobs have been lost, per Council of Forest Industries (COFI) BC data.
Since 2023 there have been 21 permanent or indefinite mill closures, including wood pulp and sawmills.
Timber harvest levels have plunged by half of previous peak years.
The BC Council of Forest Industries and Truck Loggers’ Association now warn 2026 could be another “tough year,” with more mills teetering on the brink of closure because there simply isn’t enough BC government-approved permitting of economically harvestable nearby trees to keep them running. A world leader in sustainable forestry by multiple independent studies, BC has never had a tree shortage as forests account for 55 million hectares. That’s the equivalent of the entire land area of France (excluding overseas areas) or 135.9 million American football fields. Three trees are planted for each one cut. Less than one per cent of BC forests are harvested annually, tracked by the accredited Naturally Wood group, a partnership of academia, government and industry experts.
Forestry statistics 
Charts courtesy of Naturally Wood, a partnership of government, academia and industry.
New logging‑area protections, steeper permitting hurdles, and rapid policy shifts have slashed the actual number of permitted trees cut—so while politicians talk of “stabilizing timber supply,” on the ground timber we need for homebuilding sits locked up.
Red tape strangling housing and forestry together
At the same time, the province has touted mass‑timber and tall wood buildings as solutions to home shortages—but those ambitions ignore that modern mass‑timber plants require steady, predictable timber flows from nearby sawmills and harvesters.
Instead, companies face an array of evolving regulations, environmental‑assessment delays, and evolving Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA)‑driven consultation requirements whose processes are unclear and often contested in court with overlapping land claims. This creates growing risk and uncertainty, leading to declining investments in both local mills and wood‑first housing construction. When mayors and industry leaders ask the BC NDP to unblock harvest permits and streamline approvals, they wait months or even years for discretionary ministerial decisions while the government promises another ‘study’ or review, code for kicking the problem down the road.
A disconnect between slogans and reality
The brutal irony is this government promises “more mass‑timber homes” while overseeing one of the most interventionist, high‑cost forestry harvesting jurisdictions in North America. No wonder many BC forest companies like Canfor, Interfor and West Fraser fled to the United States, taking their billions in tax revenues we need for our hospitals, education and social services with them. And that was before US President Trump increased his crippling tariffs. Until the provincial government admits many of crippling red tape policies have strangled forestry and housing, shedding jobs and investments combined, every new promise about building more “mass‑timber” homes will just ring louder in the echoing emptiness of another closed mill.
Sources:
14. https://www.facebook.com/AaronGunn.ca/videos/mill-closures-rock-bc-economy/1448818646992485/ #homes #housing #forestry #wood #masstimber #homebuilding #construction
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