Contributions to Communities and Local Economies

Canfor and Canfor Pulp are active members of the communities where we operate. We provide jobs and other economic benefits, and we support events and organizations that reflect our business goals or provide broad local value.

Canfor Pulp directly contributed more than $540 million to British Columbia’s economy through employee pay cheques, property taxes and goods and services purchased. This support is especially significant in Prince George, and extends far beyond city limits as our employees and our suppliers come from all over the region. 

We make sure local businesses benefit from spending related to our woodlands operations. In BC, our Radium division consistently buys more than 90% of its goods and services locally – in 2016, it achieved a five-year average target of 91%. In Fort St. James, we spent $23.5 million for local goods and services.  

Through our Corporate Sponsorship and Donation Program, Canfor and Canfor Pulp donated over $530,000 for community activities in 2016. We support activities of all sizes – from the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation’s Miracle Weekend and United Way to local sports events and fundraisers. In 2016, these included:

• $10,000 to help New Day in the Peace Ministries in Fort St. John restore the lives of women and their families dealing with addictions and other harmful patterns of living.
• $7,000 to sponsor the National Aboriginal Energy and Power Association’s 2017 Natural Resources Forum in Prince George.
• $7,500 for the Rotary Club of Grande Prairie, Alberta, Annual Scarecrow Festival.
• $10,000 for the Trans Canada Trail, one of the world’s longest networks of trails that will link Canadians from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Canfor’s support for the BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver in 2016 included donations through its Miracle Weekend, the Gabrielle Pinette Endowment for Epilepsy Research, the Festival of Trees and Jeans Day. We also supported the VGH and UBC Hospital Foundation and St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, and hospitals in Fort Nelson and Dawson Creek. We again sponsored a guest room at Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver, which offers accommodation to families whose seriously ill children are being treated at BC Children’s Hospital.

We have signed on as a community sponsor of the Telus Cup, Canada’s National Midget Hockey Championship, which will be held in Prince George in April 2017. And we donated $50,000 worth of lumber to help build the Pacific Autism Family Network Centre of Excellence in Richmond, BC, which opened in January 2017, and $900 for ramps and handrails in Darlington, SC. We have committed to donate approximately $80,000 of lumber to Emily Carr University in Vancouver where it will be used for exposed interior applications at Canada’s first purpose-built art and design school.

 
Canfor donated $50,000 worth of lumber to help build the Pacific Autism Family Network Centre of Excellence in Richmond, BC.

In 2016, employees in BC and Alberta raised more than $265,000 for the United Way, and a corporate donation increased this to $316,000 – $45,000 more than in 2015.

During the holiday season in December, we donated $30,000 to organizations such as food banks, the Salvation Army and Christmas bureau societies that do so much for people in the Canadian and US communities where we operate. In addition to this corporate donation, many of our employees helped local food banks and sponsored families in their communities.

In Alberta, we have a road patrol that enforces regulation infractions, over-weight loads or load safety infractions involving logging trucks on the 3,000 kilometres of resource roads we own and operate. The funds we collect for these penalties are donated to the community – in 2016, we collected $100,300 for Grande Prairie.