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. | PHOTO: COALITION FOR A BETTER FUTURE
Coalition for a Better Future co-chair and former federal minister, Hon. 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 a policy conference hosted by Coalition member Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) in Ottawa on 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 was participating in a panel focused on reclaiming Canada’s competitiveness, sharing the stage with another Coalition member, Hon. Gary Mar, President and CEO of the Canada West Foundation. The session was moderated by Moe Kabbara, President of The Transition Accelerator, and it featured Lennard (Suxʷsxʷwels) Joe, CEO of the BC First Nations Forestry Council, and Shenandoah Johns, Chief Environment and Sustainability Officer at West Fraser.
Sell to grow
“If you can’t move it, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you’re not growing our economy.”
Gary Mar, President and CEO, Canada West Foundation
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.
Later in the conversation, Raitt noted that communities affected by the forestry sector need to speak up as well. “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.”
Mar also highlighted the broader importance of forestry to Canada’s rural landscape. “The point is not how many jobs are necessarily in the forestry business — it’s that they are all located throughout rural Canada,” Mar said. “That surely must be important. … This is an integral part of rural economies and that’s why it’s important.”
Mar called for improvements in trade infrastructure to ensure rural industries can access global markets. “If you can’t move it, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you’re not growing our economy,” he said.
Regulatory certainty takes courage
During another panel discussion, 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, 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.
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.
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.”
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.”
