Skip to Content

Canadian Standards Association

Canfor has CSA certification for a large proportion of our operations in British Columbia and Alberta, with two separate certificates: One for multi sites in northern British Columbia and northern Alberta, and one for the Fort St. John Code Pilot.

The 2016 CSA surveillance re-certification audit of Canfor’s woodlands in British Columbia and Alberta found our sustainable forest management system meets ISO 14001 and CSA Z809 requirements.

The audit team noted a number of good practices such as:

  • Houston has taken the lead in the West Forest Management Group to test the use of drones and high definition photography to collect site elevation data to identify preferred road locations in difficult terrain.
  • Fort St. James is tracking temporary bridges through a tailor-made Excel spreadsheet so multiple supervisors could access information about their locations, history and inspections.
  • Radium is using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) information in a number of innovative ways to improve the forest management planning process.
  • Grande Prairie exceeded the five-year rolling average MAI (mean annual increment) growth targets for both coniferous and deciduous stands, and staff participated in an Aseniwuche Winewak Nation culture camp.

Good practices identified across the company included:

  • A system of alerts to raise staff and contractor awareness about forest management system incidents and their root causes.
  • A comprehensive standard work procedure to reduce the impact of forest operations on migratory birds.
  • A fuel tank registry to ensure contractors meet testing requirements for transportation of dangerous goods.  

The audit closed three of five open non-conformities and downgraded one to an opportunity for improvement. One related to weakness in reporting of harvest method data in Chetwynd remains open, and three new minor non-conformances were identified:

  • Generally, document control procedures are implemented as required but there were weaknesses in Houston (some contractors did not have required documentation on site) and Radium (some fuel tank checklists were missing and some operators did not have a copy of the block map in their machines).
  • While operational controls ensure specified conditions and requirements are met, there were weaknesses identified in Grande Prairie (contractor did not remove four log-fill stream crossings); Houston (issues related to a riparian management zones); and Chetwynd (trees were cut within a riparian reserve zone for part of a road right of way).
  • Chetwynd has not met the target set in April 2016 to use conventional harvest methods for 93% of coniferous harvesting, balanced over each five-year cut control period in TFL, which is jointly managed with BC Timber Sales. To harvest the full timber profile, both companies must implement plans to harvest steep slope merchantable stands.

There were also four new systemic opportunities for improvement cited, related to training, operational controls, monitoring and measurement procedures, and public advisory committee documents.