Canada is battling numerous wildfires that are burning down a considerable amount of forests, which experts say will inevitably hurt the country’s lumber industry. 

Parts of Quebec and Alberta have been engulfed in wildfires that have caused evacuations and temporary shutdowns of natural resource infrastructure. Though the extent of the damage has not yet been determined, the impact will weigh on Canada’s lumber production, timber analyst John Duncanson of Corton Capital, told BNN Bloomberg in an interview on Wednesday.

“These fires are pretty serious. Forest area wise, we’re seeing the fires burn 15 times more than the 10-year average and we’re not even in fire season,” he said.

Duncanson added that lumber producers are powerless over these fires that put their resources at risk.

“The Canadian lumber industry is already suffering from a supply issue. Timber has been impacted by disease and manmade policies that already put pressure on available supply. These wildfires will only make this worse,” he added.

The producers are also unable to stock up supply as a future coping mechanism to wildfires as there are annual lumber cut limits in place, Duncanson explained.

He believes these pressures on supply will ultimately drive lumber prices higher.

One lumber producer operating mainly in Quebec said they’ve been forced to suspend operations amid the fires, which are the worst they’ve seen in decades, he told BNN Bloomberg.

“We’ve had to shut down sawmills in Quebec as some areas have been evacuated and our employees physically cannot be there to operate the machinery. It’s the worst I’ve seen in 30 years,” Louis Bouchard, director of public affairs and government relations at Resolute Forest Products, told BNN Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Quebec is the second-largest producer of lumber in Canada and responsible for 20.1 per cent of national softwood production. It follows British Columbia as the top provincial lumber producer.    

He agrees that the situation calls for political intervention when it comes to how Canadian forests are managed to help alleviate the issues.

“We need to change the way we manage, harvest and create biodiversity in our forests in order to help protect them from future forest fires,” he said.

Bouchard added that the government will also need to clear producers back into forest-burned areas as quickly as possible so they can recuperate any wood that may be salvaged.

Forest fires are just an addition to the already existing challenges that the lumber industry faces, one expert explained.

“Any sort of fire activity adds incremental strain on Canada’s lumber industry,” John Cooney, equity research analyst at ERA Forest Products Research, told BNN Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Wildfires, among other factors, will result in a continued downsizing of the industry, he added.

“Unfortunately, we’re looking at death by a thousand paper cuts for the lumber sector,” Cooney said.