Canada’s lumber industry may soon be forced to retool — and potentially abandon the imperial system in favour of metric — as new tariffs and duties push exporters to seek markets far beyond the United States. That is according to a new report in Business in Vancouver, which warns Canada’s heavy dependence on a single export market has become a structural risk for the sector.
For decades, the United States has absorbed almost all of Canada’s softwood lumber. In 2023 and 2024, for example, the US accounted for 90% of Canadian exports and 77% of British Columbia’s shipments, according to global wood markets analyst Russ Taylor. And with duties and political tensions rising, Taylor said that reliance is no longer sustainable. “This over‑reliance on the U.S. lumber market could not have come at a worse time,” Taylor said, pointing to the surge in trade barriers since President Trump took office in January 2025.
Now, mounting pressure is forcing sawmills to consider retooling for markets that use the metric system rather than North America’s imperial dimensions. And while many mills can cut both ways, the supply chain is not configured for metric‑driven production.
Taylor said the real bottleneck is the absence of European‑style log‑merchandising systems — advanced sorting lines that use X‑ray scanners and automated grading to batch logs by diameter, length, and quality before they reach the sawmill: “North American construction sizes and grades do not fit many, if not most, end‑use applications in offshore markets,” Taylor said. Logs would also need to be cut to metric lengths to meet European and Middle Eastern specifications.
Speaking to Business in Vancouver, Rick Doman, chair of Forest Innovation Investment (FII), said Canada has successfully supplied these markets before. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Canadian sawmills shipped significant volumes into Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa — until a booming U.S. housing market pulled production back across the border: “The North American market got so strong that we left those markets, and really the Nordic countries took over,” Doman said.
Now, with Japan and China — once major buyers of B.C. lumber — entering long‑term decline, the Indo‑Pacific is no longer the growth engine it once was. China’s construction boom has ended, and Japan’s demand is flat. “We do not expect any growth in Japan, and in China, they overbuilt,” Doman said.
That leaves Europe, the U.K., the Middle East, and North Africa as the most promising opportunities, with FII already hiring a new U.K. manager to rebuild market share in those regions. However, industry leaders warn that meaningful expansion will require investment in new technology and production systems.
There is federal money available. Last year, Ottawa earmarked C$500 million in the Canadian Forest Sector Transformation Task Force to support innovations such as log‑sorting technology, mill upgrades, and engineering assessments, which Taylor recommends should be used to hire a sawmill engineering specialist to map out the costs and opportunities of transitioning to metric‑aligned production.
