Raitt: Ottawa has to stop dancing to Trump’s forestry tune
Moe Kabbara, Transition Accelerator president; Gary Mar, Canada West Foundation president and CEO; Lisa Raitt, co-chair of Coalition for a Better Future and vice-chair of Global Investment Banking, CIBC; Sehanandoah Johns, West Fraser Chief Environment and Sustainability Officer; and Lennard Joe (Suxʷsxʷwels), B.C. First Nations Forestry Council CEO spoke on a panel, Reclaiming Canadian Competitiveness in Forestry and Beyond, at the Forest Products Association of Canada policy conference Oct. 22. / MEANS & WAYS PHOTO
Former federal minister Lisa Raitt is calling on Canadian politicians and policymakers to show courage and act decisively to restore the country’s competitive footing amid mounting trade and regulatory challenges.
Speaking at the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) policy conference in Ottawa Oct. 22, Raitt said Canada must stop reacting to U.S. policy shifts and start setting its own economic agenda. “Our proximity to the United States has definitely been an economic opportunity,” she said. “But at the same time, it means that we’re dealing with whatever curveballs the United States is throwing at us at any given time.”
She said Ottawa can no longer afford to “dance” to Washington’s tune. “We just can't continue in this role with the United States where they call the dance, they call the tune and we dance to it,” she said, pointing to decades of “little dekes along the way” — from softwood lumber duties to tax credit disputes — that have kept Canadian policy reactive.
Raitt described the current moment as “a burning-platform time,” warning that if forestry becomes “one of the gives in this negotiation,” Canada could lose ground in a sector critical to rural economies. “Are we reclaiming a Canadian competitive advantage, or are we forging a new path?” she asked.
For Raitt, competitiveness begins with decisive regulatory reform. “What it comes down to is courage — courage of politicians and bureaucrats,” she said. “Regulations are just risk management. And if the regulations don’t make sense for the mission we now have, we have to amend our risk appetite.”
FPAC president and CEO Derek Nighbor warned that Ottawa’s silence on lumber trade issues is breeding uncertainty across the sector.
“We want to know where we stand — are we going under the bus or is there a plan for us?” Nighbor told the audience on a different panel, describing growing frustration after the industry was omitted from recent government briefings on U.S. trade talks.
He said duties as high as 45% have become dire for Canadian producers. “You layer soft markets on top of that — it’s existential,” he said.
Former Foreign Affairs deputy minister Marta Morgan moderated a panel discussion with Canadian Chamber of Commerce VP Matthew Holmes, Carleton University professor Meredith Lilly and Forest Products Association of Canada CEO Derek Nighbor. / MEANS & WAYS PHOTO
Nighbor noted that pulp and paper mills are also at risk as sawmill slowdowns threaten chip supply.
While praising federal efforts to designate forestry as a “strategic sector” alongside steel and aluminum, Nighbor said recent developments have raised concerns. “We were starting to see lumber in the same sense as steel, aluminum, auto and energy,” he said.
The government later said it was working on sector-specific supports only for steel, aluminum and energy. “That was news to us.”
Carleton University trade expert Meredith Lilly, a former adviser to Stephen Harper’s government, said on that same panel as Nighbor that Canadian officials are negotiating a “very narrow tariff relief deal,” not a broad reset of the North American trade agreement.
She noted U.S. interest in resolving the softwood dispute remains limited. “I don’t see a strong interest among Americans to get this done,” she said.
Still, she said a broader trade review could present “an opportunity to ensure that softwood lumber is pulled into that broader conversation,” potentially easing duties under a restructured framework.
Matthew Holmes, senior vice-president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said Canadian premiers and industry leaders have shown unusual unity in the face of U.S. trade volatility. “I don’t know if the premiers have ever been this united for so long,” he said.
But Holmes cautioned that divisions could re-emerge as certain sectors see relief before others. “If we see certain sectors get carved out where we see some resolution to some of the tariff issue… we’re going to see some people saying, ‘Well, what about us?’”
He urged industry to “remain patient and united,” saying that a coordinated national stance is “essential for what you need to do next.”
Lennard Joe, CEO of the B.C. First Nations Forestry Council, said improving competitiveness must also include Indigenous economic participation and land management.
“When we have First Nations in the room, you’re going to have a different perspective,” Joe said. “You’re going to have someone who just can’t invest and walk away.”
Joe highlighted the growing role of Indigenous-led forestry governance in British Columbia, including through the province’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. “We’ve created a structure that allows us to sit with the province and work on transformation of forest policy and regulations,” he said, adding Indigenous stewardship is central to addressing wildfire risks and ensuring long-term sustainability.
Raitt also noted that communities affected by the forestry sector also need to speak up. “All of these communities across the country that are knitted together by the forestry sector have to raise their voices to make sure that politicians know that we are at a point where a nondecision is a decision. So not wanting to go forward with regulatory reform, well, that's your decision, isn't it? Because we're at that point.”
She also said that opening up trade markets and exploiting them is essential for long term prosperity.
“What the government needs to do is they need to restaff up their embassies to help tap into those markets that we opened up with trade deals,” she said. “You know, one of the great things that both my government and the Justin Trudeau government did was we signed the deals, and we maintained them. We started the negotiations, they signed the deals. I'm delighted that they did that, but now it's for us to exploit them. And we haven't really done that, because the U.S. is such a big opportunity for us. But it's not going to be there all the time.”
