This article by Jordan Solomon and Fred Ghatala was originally published in iPolitics on 29 January 2026.
Canada's forest industry is being dismantled in plain sight.
Over the past year, trade uncertainty and US tariffs have erased thousands of forestry jobs and billions of dollars in economic value. Mills have closed. Communities that depend on forestry have been destabilised. Investment has stalled.
This is not a cyclical downturn. It is a structural failure.
For decades, Canada built its forest economy around a single export market and a narrow set of commodity products. That strategy has now been exposed as dangerously fragile. The country's closest trading partner has proven unreliable, and the cost of over-dependence is being paid by rural workers and regions across the country.
Canada does not have a forestry problem. It has a market diversification problem.
Ironically, today's global uncertainty has created a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Policy volatility in the US has global manufacturers reassessing where to invest. Capital is mobile, and companies across the biofuels, biopower, renewable chemicals, and advanced materials sectors are actively looking for stable jurisdictions in which to build new production facilities. Canada can and should be at the top of that list—but it needs to build the foundational infrastructure to make this happen.
Learning from Finland
Other countries have already shown what investing in enabling infrastructure looks like. Finland is pursuing a national strategy to double the value of its forest sector without harvesting more wood by shifting away from commodity exports and towards advanced wood products, renewable chemicals, and bio-based fuels. Companies such as Metsä Group, Stora Enso, UPM, and Neste transformed legacy pulp and paper assets into globally competitive platforms for renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel, biomaterials, and engineered wood. Finland built the infrastructure required to catalyse rapid development of new markets—and it's working.
Canada has the same raw material advantage, industrial know-how, and access to deep capital markets. What it lacks is the foundational infrastructure required to deliver the market diversification its forest economy now desperately needs.
The data infrastructure gap
One of the most overlooked pieces of industrial infrastructure is investment-grade data and intelligence. Nationally consistent, credible, standardised datasets on forest biomass resource availability, infrastructure capacity, workforce readiness, and permitting pathways give developers and investors around the world the clarity to quickly identify the optimal locations across the country to build new biomanufacturing plants at lower risk—especially former mill sites. When that clarity exists, biomanufacturing projects move faster—from site selection to financing to construction—allowing Canada to catalyse and accelerate the development of new plants that turn wood fibre into higher-value products that can be used domestically and exported globally.
Fortunately, this kind of investment-grade intelligence is already being produced through CSA standards-based designations called Biofuel Development Opportunity (BDO) Zones. BDO Zones function as market-facing infrastructure—translating data on feedstock, sites, infrastructure, and permitting into investment signals that accelerate project development. This approach has been associated with billions of dollars in announced new biomanufacturing projects in North America, such as the recent $845 million plant announcement by Provectus Biofuels in the Vegreville, Alberta, BDO Zone.
Tangible economic benefits
The benefits are tangible. A single large biofuels facility can generate hundreds to thousands of construction and permanent operating jobs, often in regions hit hardest by pulp mill closures. Independent research examining biomanufacturing projects announced in BDO Zones shows these facilities can generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually in total economic impact across rural economies.
Putting project-ready BDO Zone data in the hands of Canada's global investment teams would markedly improve their ability to drive new investment into the country.
Canada already has a strong, capable global trade and investment network through Invest in Canada and the Trade Commissioner Service. What is missing is a standardised, site-level intelligence layer that allows these teams to respond quickly and confidently when global firms explore biomanufacturing investments. BDO Zone data can provide that foundation—acting as a force multiplier—enabling them to do their work more effectively and attracting billions of dollars in new plants producing biofuels, renewable chemicals, and biomaterials from Canadian wood.
A critical window
The federal government's new Canadian Forest Sector Transformation Task Force opens a critical window to address structural weaknesses in Canada's forest economy. By enabling market diversification for forest products and reducing dependence on the United States, BDO Zones merit consideration as part of this work.
Canada did not choose this crisis. But it can choose how it responds.
The country can continue reacting to closures, trade shocks, and lost investment—or it can build the data and execution infrastructure that allows new markets to form, new plants to be built, and new value to be captured at home. That choice will determine whether this moment is remembered as another missed opportunity, or as the turning point for Canada's forest economy.
BDO Zones could unlock billions in Canadian forest bioeconomy investment
