Top of the Deck · Lead
TRADE
Round 2 of the CUSMA review opens in Washington without Canada — as the US envoy calls Trump's renewal threat 'an invitation to negotiate'
The second round of the US-Mexico review of CUSMA — the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement — opens in Washington today, June 16, and runs through June 17, with Canada still outside the room. Per the Office of the US Trade Representative, the round covers agriculture, fair-competition conditions and rules of origin; a third round is set for the week of July 20 in Mexico City. The bilateral track was launched after Washington and Mexico City agreed to a series of negotiating rounds ahead of the July 1 review milestone under CUSMA Article 34.7 — the date by which the three governments must either confirm a 16-year renewal or shift the agreement onto annual reviews. Both governments have signalled the work will run past July 1 regardless.
The temperature around Canada is where the week's news sits. On June 12, the US ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, said President Trump's June 10 line that the US is 'not looking to renew' CUSMA should be read as an invitation to negotiate, not a threat to walk away — the first softening signal from Washington since Trump's comment. Pulling the other way: Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama publicly accused Canada of undercutting his state's lumber industry, a reminder that the protectionist bloc behind the softwood duties is not standing down. Two signals, opposite directions, two weeks before the milestone.
Operational read for BC. The province's position, set out by the BC Lumber Trade Council, is that the CUSMA review is BC's best chance to fold the softwood lumber dispute into a broader settlement rather than wait out annual duty reviews (Edition 010). But Canada is not at the US-Mexico table, and softwood sits in a parallel track that grinds on regardless: final results of the seventh administrative review of the anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders are due between late August and October, with the preliminary combined rate cut to 24.83 percent in April from the current 35.16 percent — and a separate 10 percent Section 232 tariff stacking on top either way. For mill operators, the live question is whether a seat opens for Canada before July 1, or whether BC's file stays where it is: outside the room, under the stack.
Top of the Deck · Second
SAFETY
BC puts $20 million a year behind wildfire prevention as fibre recovery — heading into a season Ottawa calls the country's highest risk
On June 8, BC Forests Minister Ravi Parmar committed $20 million per year over three years through the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC) to fund 60 forest enhancement projects in 2026-27 — landscape-level fuel breaks, residual-fuel removal, prescribed burns and egress-route improvements, delivered by First Nations, community forests, woodlot operators and local forestry companies. Parmar tied prevention directly to fibre: 'The best wildfire is the one that never starts,' he said, adding that the work 'means local logs for local mills to create local jobs.' The province says the risk-reduction work also recovers fibre that might otherwise be wasted — fibre that can help keep BC mills running. The federal forest-sector package announced June 3 adds a further $37 million to FESBC (Edition 010).
The spending lands ahead of a season federal modelling flags as the worst-positioned in the country. Natural Resources Canada's outlook has British Columbia facing the highest and most sustained wildfire risk of any province as fire danger builds through July (Global News, May 28). The early evidence is already on the board: in the first week of June, an out-of-control fire in the Swede Creek area southwest of Prince George drew a Cariboo Regional District evacuation alert spanning 17,894 hectares and 22 homes or structures. It is one of the season's first Interior fires to force an alert — the kind of event the FESBC fuel-break and egress work is meant to blunt.
Operational read. For a province that has logged 21 permanent or indefinite mill closures since 2023 (Edition 010) and repeatedly cites a shortage of economic timber, wildfire is a double hit: it burns standing inventory and, post-fire, leaves salvage that degrades fast. FESBC's pitch — that fuel management and risk reduction also feed fibre to mills — is the province trying to make one budget line do two jobs: protect communities and recover wood. The watch item for operators is execution: how much of the 60-project slate becomes delivered fibre this season, and whether prevention spending scales with a fire risk Ottawa says will run hot through July.
The Cut · three things to know
1 ·Environmental group challenges the province over old-growth logging in provincial parks. An environmental group has publicly taken the BC government to task over old-growth logging in provincial parks, the latest flashpoint in the province's old-forest file as it works through deferrals and a promised shift in how the most at-risk old growth is managed. The claim is the group's; the province has not been found by any court or regulator to be in breach. For operators, the relevance is the same one that runs under every old-growth headline: each hectare moved into deferral or protection is a hectare out of the operable land base, and the old-growth debate remains one of the live constraints on BC's economic timber supply.
[Source: Castanet.]
2 ·Cowichan River braces for another dry summer as flow reductions begin. On Vancouver Island, managers have begun reducing flows as the Cowichan River heads into another dry summer — a recurring pressure point for the watershed that feeds the Crofton operations and a reminder that water, not just duties and fibre, shapes coastal forestry's operating year. Low summer flows have repeatedly forced pumping and curtailment decisions on the Cowichan in recent seasons; an early start to flow reductions signals another tight year for the system.
[Source: Cowichan Valley Citizen.] 