BC's forest subsidies may be accelerating logging, not preventing it

British Columbians are subsidizing the province's forest companies to the tune of tens of millions of dollars each year under a government program designed to defray the cost of shipping logs from remote forests to distant mills. In 2023, the most recent year with published records, logging companies received nearly $33 million in public funds to underwrite hauling "low-value" logs to wood pulp and pellet mills. Unpublished figures show those subsidies continue, albeit at lower levels, with some payments covering hundreds of kilometres of transport from increasingly rare coastal temperate rainforests to southern pulp mills.

The subsidies are tracked in documents from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC), an organization created and funded by the provincial government and reporting to Forests Minister Ravi Parmar. While the society's mandate includes preventing wildfires and improving wildlife habitat, many FESBC funds simply underwrite the rising costs of hauling logs as logging pushes farther into remote territory.

Conservation North director Michelle Connolly says the funding may be accelerating the logging of remote and high-elevation forests that might otherwise remain untouched. "FESBC's stated purpose is partly to improve wildlife habitat and they are instead doing the exact opposite — subsidizing the logging and shipping of the best wildlife habitat to pulp and pellet mills," Connolly said. "There is no 'forest enhancement' happening with this program."

According to FESBC records, more than $7.1 million went to 15 companies in 2023 to lower shipping costs to the Harmac, Crofton and Howe Sound pulp mills on BC's south coast. Another 21 projects benefited pulp mills, wood pellet mills and wood-fired energy facilities in the Interior, with a combined value of $25.2 million.