Photo credit: Brandon Smith/Dreamstime.

By Curtis Galbraith

Forestry Business

There are ways to support the forestry industry though tariffs, duties says APFA official

Apr 1, 2025 | 3:29 PM

The senior vice president of the Alberta Forest Products Association says there are a few things people in the Peace can do to support an industry dealing with tariffs and duties.

Brock Mulligan says there is “a huge opportunity to build more with our wood.”

“We see a growing demand for recreation centres. We think that a lot of them should look like the Philip J. Currie (Dinosaur) Museum out in the County of Grande Prairie. Amazing, beautiful wood building.”

“We also see increasing urbanization and folks living in increasingly taller apartment buildings and those should be built with resources that are made here in Grande Prairie.”

Mulligan says there are 2500 forestry jobs in or near Grande Prairie between the Canfor, International Paper, Weyerhaeuser and West Fraser mills.

He adds his group is puzzled as to why the US wants tariffs and duties on Canadian products.

He calls these charges “counterproductive to folks in the US” because of a housing shortage in that country.

“They need affordable homes, and this is going to drive the price up. It’s going to hurt people who work in construction, who work in transportation.”

“The other thing is, pulp out of this region is a feed stock that creates thousands of jobs in the US. It creates products that they use at home, that they export around the world and that they sell back to us here in Canada.”

Mulligan says the Canadian industry buys things like equipment and chemicals from the Americans.

He adds there are several things the industry can do to push back against American tariffs and duties.

Those include a trip to the US to talk to people there about the mutual benefits in the forestry business.

“The second thing we need to do is we need to focus on our competitiveness. It’s not a time to be adding cost or permitting delays.”

“Alberta is already a very competitive jurisdiction but we can’t lose focus on that because it’s critically important right now.”

An association delegation is travelling with Minister of Forestry and Parks Todd Loewen in Texas this week.

Mulligan was part of an industry panel that spoke at the State of the City presentations.