Canadian lumber giant is shifting corporate support operations to Georgia
Canadian lumber giant Interfor Corp., which blamed U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber when it idled two Northern Ontario sawmills indefinitely in April, has told employees it plans to shift its corporate and functional support operations from the company’s current headquarters in Burnaby, B.C., to an office in Georgia.
In a memo sent to employees earlier this month and viewed by the Financial Post, chief executive Ian Fillinger said the Peachtree City office, which is on the outskirts of Atlanta, will be established as Interfor’s “primary hub for corporate and functional support.”[…]
Since last year, Interfor and other lumber companies have been grappling with the impact of U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber. A 10 per cent tariff came on top of longstanding anti-dumping and countervailing duties, and softwood lumber shipments to the U.S. now face a cumulative levy of 45 per cent.
The United States is a big customer for Interfor. According to a November 2025 investor presentation, the U.S. accounted for 84 per cent of Interfor’s lumber sales by market. At the time, 62 per cent of the company’s operations were in the U.S. south and northwest, with the balance in the B.C. interior and eastern Canada.
Still nothing at the CBC this morning.
Imagine that.
“Imagine that.”
Yeah, tariffs doing exactly what they are intended to do. Who’da thunk it?
If 62% of their operations and 84% of their sales are in the US, why would they stay in Canada?
We’ve seen this movie before – Canadian company gets big, even employs a lot of Americans in America, and then it becomes an American company.
Canada has always been a subsidiary of America.
And I don’t write that as a bad thing.
Geography is Destiny.
FWIW: as many here have written – tariffs just make Americans pay more. In this case its houses.
America appreciates the new job opportunities. Thank you PM Carney.
When you can’t make money cutting down trees in Canada…
By the way, in case anyone is still wondering why there’s Ontario fire smoke in NYC, this is why. You cut ’em down or you let ’em burn. Nobody been cutting them down for 10 years.
And spray everything with glyphosate, turning the underbrush into kindling.
“Still nothing on the CBC this morning”.
Well, the CBC is paid to shovel Liberal-government propaganda.
Not to worry my Canuck Softwood employee friends! Trump and Musk will grant you all H1b Visas … cause you have “special knowledge and talent” about trees and stuff. Oh! And because you’ll work for Canadian dollars and shut up cause you desperately don’t want to get sent back to your country of origin.
Since 2021, under the NDP’s “watch”, 22 mills have shut down in BC.
22. These are usually small town operations, devastating the local areas with the last decent paying jobs in their region.
Crofton pulp mill.
Prince George pulp mill.
Port Alberni’s last pulp machine.
Numerous saw mills around the province, 100 Mile House, Williams Lake, Ft St John, Vanderhoof, Fraser Lake, Chemainus, Grand Forks, Port Alice……it’s amazing the Weyerhauser mill in Princeton is still operational.
All under the NDP’s watch. They love to play the victim role, rather than pro-actively realize their own policies are contributing to the closures. Can’t blame DRUMPF! when those closures happened before the bad Orangeman.
Instead, all they offer is “support”, “solidarity”, “sympathy” and retraining to be a fry cook, janitor, security guard………..
The NDP plan is to turn BC into a GIANT PARK, then give it away to the bush baby grifters.
No comment from the commies how this continuing massive erosion of the tax base further erodes the capability of the government to fund anything. They just borrow endlessly from the bottomless pit of debt. And the local media just keeps clapping along.
The debt doesn’t resonate with the commie base. It doesn’t because it’s happening all so gradually……..until it’s all at once in a financial crisis, no doubt once they are thrown out of office, and they’ll blame the Conservatives, for 13 years of outrageous, careless, reckless financial administration.
“If an elbow falls in the forest.”
I found that title to be really funny. It hit my funny bone and my inner 8 year old sense of humour (humerous).
Oh, and remember “elbow gate?”
What is it with Liberals and elbows?
As for the CBC….they don’t get to work till at least noon. By then they can crib from CTV or some other propaganda arm of the gov’t.
Clinging to our guns and religion because they took our jobs.
Devastating conservative rural communities seems like a political policy. The loss of those jobs is devastating, and we’ve been struggling with it for decades now in the Western US. Coal mines, power plants, oil and gas drilling, timber harvesting, beet processing. Obama was the absolute worst.
Most wood is harvested from Crown land under license. Since we don’t have an agreement with the US, make a regulation that all licensees must be Canadian companies based in Canada. Move operations to Georgia? surrender your Canadian licenses. Do the same for all resource based industries.
Our political masters love regulations
And that is how you make a small fortune … start out with a big one.
It doesn’t help that anti-business, environmentalist provincial governments impede the forest industry with reams of red tape and make it so expensive to harvest the trees either.
There’s no secret in why the US hammers Canadian lumber with taxes: just watch a huge truckload of logs zip along our highways and streets, and compare that to the tiny jag allowed on a WA state highway. Their forest industry has been hamstrung by ludicrous restrictions since the “sacred” spotted own gained the upper hand. That, and BC forests are vast and fast-growing, making wood supply so much less dear.