By the time a so-called “raw log” is loaded onto a truck — or in a small minority of cases, onto a ship — it has already travelled through a dense web of economic activity that is anything but raw.
It has been identified and cruised through professional forest planning. Roads have been engineered and constructed. Heavy equipment has been purchased, financed and maintained. Logging crews have mobilized. Mechanics and welders have serviced machinery. Truck drivers have hauled. Fuel suppliers have delivered. Silviculture obligations have been funded or secured. Stumpage has been paid to the Crown on public lands. In many instances, Indigenous partnerships and benefit agreements structure access and revenue sharing.
Every log carries embedded value long before it ever approaches a mill gate or tidewater.
Industry analyst David Elstone has noted that it can take more than 100 distinct job functions to sustainably plan, harvest and deliver timber from forest to primary manufacturing. That employment ecosystem spans planners, engineers, environmental professionals, equipment operators, truckers, port workers and the local service businesses that support them. A log resting in a marshalling yard has already generated wages, tax revenue and community income across rural and coastal British Columbia.
None of that is “raw.”
And yet the phrase “raw log exports” has become one of the most emotionally potent terms in B.C.’s public debate. It suggests value slipping away untouched. It implies that jobs are simply being boxed up and shipped offshore. It frames a complex fibre management tool as a moral failure.
Let me be clear. I am not defending raw log exports as an ideal outcome. Where domestic processing can be economically sustained, it should be. Value-added manufacturing strengthens communities and diversifies economic opportunity.
But I am defending clarity.
Log exports function as a management tool within a constrained fibre system. Certain species and grades do not align perfectly with existing mill configurations. Access to broader markets can secure value that sustains harvesting levels — and with them, the jobs tied to logging, road building, hauling, port operations and equipment servicing. If policies restrain the log producer from selling at the highest price, eventually investments will go elsewhere.
“Domestic log markets alone cannot sustain harvest operations,” says Mosaic Forest Management. “International markets provide essential price premiums that make harvesting economically viable.”
This market diversification enables continued supply to domestic mills despite below-cost domestic pricing. Remove the outlet of log sales without addressing underlying supply and cost conditions, and the likely result is not a new sawmill. It is reduced harvest volumes and fewer total jobs.
This is not hypothetical. Raw log exports have already fallen sharply. Raw log exports from British Columbia fell by 54 percent between 2017 and 2024, and their share of licensed commitments dropped from 12.6 percent to 6.9 percent.
If exports were the foundation of this crisis, that contraction would have restored stability. It has not.
The term “raw log exports” has increasingly taken on a second function — not as a neutral policy descriptor, but as an emotional trigger. In activist discourse, it is frequently deployed as shorthand for irresponsible forestry itself. British Columbia has seen illegal blockades, intimidation and even arson linked to anti-logging campaigns on Vancouver Island, including actions that have made it unsafe for some First Nations forestry workers to carry out their work. In that climate, “raw log exports” becomes more than a policy term. It becomes a weaponized symbol.
That symbolism obscures the structural realities.
The more consequential driver of contraction is timber supply. British Columbia’s Allowable Annual Cut has declined from 85.6 million cubic metres in 2007 to 59.6 million in 2024. Licensed commitments have dropped by more than 50 percent to 41.7 million cubic metres. The Council of Forest Industry expressed dismay in response to the Feb. 17 B.C. Budget that projects a harvest level of 29 million cubic metres over the next three years – a signal that there is no plan of action to progress toward the actual approved cut of 60 million cubic metres.
Shrinking fibre supply constrains scale. Without scale, investment hesitates. Without investment, productivity gains stall. Industry surveys consistently rank British Columbia at the bottom among peer forestry jurisdictions for reinvestment and competitiveness.
At the same time, operating costs are rising. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that the Clean Fuel Standard could increase fuel costs by $0.17 per litre by 2030 and reduce GDP by 0.3 percent. The industrial carbon tax, targeted to rise to $130 per tonne, could reduce GDP by between 0.9 percent and 1.3 percent by 2030. Electricity rates for industrial customers of BC Hydro have increased, inflation-adjusted, by 25 percent between 2007 and 2024. Forestry is energy-intensive and transportation-intensive. When fibre supply contracts while energy and regulatory costs rise, margins compress. Sustained compression closes mills.
Trade pressures compound the strain. Approximately 70 percent of B.C.’s lumber is exported to the United States, where long-standing anti-dumping and countervailing duties continue to apply, with some producers facing rates as high as 47 percent. Logs exported south may be subject to additional tariffs. These are structural realities.
Against that backdrop, focusing primarily on “raw log exports” risks confusing a management mechanism with the root cause. Exports are already constrained. They represent a declining share of commitments. They are regulated and conditional. Yet closures persist because supply has shrunk, costs have escalated and policy instability has dampened investment.
The forest economy sustains more than mill jobs. It sustains contractors, truckers, mechanics, port workers and the small businesses embedded in rural communities. Policies that treat exports as a simple leakage risk overlooking how harvesting, hauling and support services depend on viable fibre flows — whether processed domestically or sold into broader markets.
Trigger words mobilize attention. But it’s math that determines outcomes.
If British Columbia intends to rebuild competitiveness, it must focus on timber supply stability, cost competitiveness, regulatory predictability and trade resilience. Those issues are less emotionally satisfying. They are also decisive.
Stewart Muir is president and CEO of Resource Works. He can be reached at [email protected].
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