Canada is Facing Acute Forest Sector Workforce Challenges
The Canadian forest sector is currently struggling to recruit enough workers with the necessary skills and knowledge to fulfil its potential as a solutions provider to national policy priorities. EcoCanada warns that forestry professionals, including forest technologists, technicians, logging truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, and forestry/logging labourers, are at high risk for critical shortages over the next decade. These roles make up the backbone of our forest-to-buildings supply chains, alongside new roles in design and engineering that are required to support innovation in the forest bioeconomy.
How the Federal Government Can Unlock Employment Opportunities in the Forest Sector
The federal government can leverage their capacity in support of local solutions, championing a community-based approach to workforce policy by developing a national Forest Sector Strategy that includes the following strategic actions:
1. Work with municipalities, provinces, educational institutions, and industry representatives to create a Forest Sector Skills Development Plan that identifies skills gaps and regional models for addressing those gaps that can be scaled or standardized for implementation elsewhere.
2. Collaborate with municipalities and Indigenous communities to create Rural Development Plans that quantify community infrastructure gaps and propose remedial actions — particularly for housing affordability, childcare, and transportation in forest-dependent communities—linking those plans to broader policy objectives in housing and public health.
3. Deliver targeted funding to scale proven capacity-building initiatives (i.e., existing programs with a measurable positive impact on the workforce) for bringing under-represented and equity-deserving groups into the forest sector workforce—in particular, the Outland Youth Employment Program (OYEP) and similar initiatives.
4. Invest in credential recognition and accreditation bodies like the Forest Professional Regulators of Canada (FPRC) to create national “one-stop shops” for immigrating professionals, getting more qualified people already residing in Canada working faster.
Context
To support Canada’s labour market, family and community livelihoods, and the low-carbon bioeconomy, systemic barriers to labour acquisition and retention must be addressed at the national level, especially as the affordability crisis accelerates.
Delivering solutions to Canada’s policy challenges benefits will require us to overcome three interconnected challenges:
1. Deepening demographic shifts;
2. Barriers to effective recruitment and retention, and;
3. Evolving skills requirements to keep pace with emerging forest technologies and innovations.
These challenges are exacerbated by a growing socioeconomic crisis affecting Canadian communities and workers. The rising cost of living, lack of affordable housing, and difficulty accessing social services have had especially profound impacts on the rural, remote, and Northern communities in which the sector is concentrated—eroding historic cost and lifestyle benefits that drew new community members into the forest sector workforce. However, there are numerous common-sense federal actions that can help forest sector employers overcome these challenges, maintaining and growing its contributions to Canada’s near- and long-term prosperity.
To realize its full potential as an employer of choice for workers across Canada, the forest sector needs federal government help to tackle systemic barriers that limit growth and jeopardize workers’ futures. In doing so, we can maintain and grow our contributions to shared national goals like housing affordability, emissions reductions and wildfire resilience, economic development for rural communities, and economic reconciliation for Indigenous Peoples. Implementing a formal Forest Sector Strategy with targeted measures for skills (re)training, labour policy change, and rural economic development is an essential measure for ensuring the sector’s contributions to Canada’s near- and long-term prosperity.
