As Prime Minister Mark Carney proceeds with his plans for nation-building, he must remember what defines us as a nation. According to a recent poll, it’s not hockey, the Canadian flag or even maple syrup … it’s nature. At the heart of Canada’s natural assets are forest ecosystems. Canadians depend on them for jobs, medicines, health, food, and respite from an increasingly stressful world. Yet, recent studies have shown that industrial activities, including logging and mining, have degraded this natural capital. Last week, Ottawa released its annual “State of Canada’s Forests” report, a glossy and carefully curated publication that ignores biodiversity loss, sidesteps Indigenous rights and paints an increasingly degraded system as “sustainably managed.”
In response, a coalition of environmental organizations released a report, “Accountability… or Advertising? A Critical Review of Canada’s State of the Forests Report.” It reveals a disturbing disconnect between the federal government’s forest reporting and the state of forest ecosystems on the ground.
The counter report illustrates how forests are shaping current events: how provincial failures to effectively protect critical caribou habitat have led to recommendations for federal intervention; how the lack of free, prior and informed consent in logging approvals has led to Indigenous resistance; how clearcutting, conifer planting and glyphosate spraying practices might be contributing to wildfire risk in some areas and how industrial logging contributes to carbon being released from trees and forest soils.
The federal report is quick to highlight the number of trees planted and the percentage of forests under third-party certification schemes. But try to find any discussion of more important issues—such as logging of critical caribou habitat, the significant loss of old-growth and primary forests and the ongoing weakening of laws to protect endangered species—and you will come up empty-handed.
It’s not just what’s said; it’s also what’s omitted.
Despite claiming to uphold the internationally recognized Montreal Process framework for sustainable forest management, the federal report routinely skips key reporting indicators. There’s little or no mention of biodiversity loss, pollution from mills or how the cumulative impact of industrial development continues to fragment vast tracks of forest. There is also no transparent accounting of Canada’s ongoing failure to meet its international and domestic forest-related climate goals.
Instead of offering an unbiased overview of forest health, the government report reads like a promotional brochure for the forestry industry. It frames sustainability in terms of the amount of wood that can be extracted, how efficiently logs become products and how quickly trees are replanted.
But planting seedlings in the wake of clearcutting is not the same as maintaining a healthy and diverse forest ecosystem. A replanted forest does not support the same wildlife, carbon functions or cultural relationships as natural forests. The federal reporting system largely ignores these distinctions. It focuses on quantity, not quality.
The consequences of this narrow approach are visible in forests throughout the country. Caribou populations are steadily declining as industry fragments their habitat. Carbon stored in forest soils is being released into the atmosphere at alarming rates. Indigenous nations trying to protect their ancestral lands and establish Indigenous protected and conserved areas are routinely sidelined by systems that prioritize Crown-forest management approaches over Indigenous law and governance.
Forest degradation also has global consequences. As Canada seeks reliable trading partners, it must, for example, reckon with the European Union’s commitment to ban forest product imports from degraded forests — a policy set to take effect in December 2025.
When the public doesn’t know what’s at stake, it can’t demand better.
The Canadian public deserves more transparency, not more greenwashing. Indigenous nations deserve to have their inherent and treaty rights upheld. And our forests deserve more than public relations spin.
The government of Canada should stop treating its annual report as advertising and instead focus on accountability.
Rachel Plotkin is a wildlife campaigner at the David Suzuki Foundation. Julee Boan is partnership director of global nature at the Natural Resources Defence Council.
The Hill Times