Top Highlights

• Canada’s lumber and wood industries convert logs into various products, from lumber to wood chips. Softwood, derived from coniferous trees, supplies most of the manufacturers in these industries and is cut primarily in British Columbia. The remainder of the industry is supplied by hardwood (from deciduous trees, e.g., birch, maple, oak) found mainl...
• The products created by the lumber and wood industries include lumber, veneer, plywood, particleboard, oriented strand board (formerly called flake, chip, or wafer board), wood pellets and wood composites (or engineered wood). These products are created by mechanical processes such as sawing, peeling, slicing or chipping.
• They also produce, as residual by-products, wood chips, sawdust and shavings. In addition, increasing attention is being paid to both the chemicals and fuels that can be extracted from wood. Of all these products, lumber is the most significant in terms of value and volumes manufactured.
• Most of the lumber produced in Canada is exported; less than 40 per cent is consumed domestically. Since the mid-19th century, the United States has been the most important buyer of Canada’s lumber. For nearly as long, however, and especially since the 1980s, Canadian lumber producers have been subjected to a number of tariffs and restrictions that...
• Over roughly the last half century, the number of large sawmills in Canada has decreased significantly. Although this attrition has been a function of the trend towards larger, more technically efficient manufacturing complexes, other factors have also been at work. These include the recession beginning in 2008, the permanent reduction in the size ...

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