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Lumber producer Remabec cuts 1,000 jobs in Quebec, citing tariffs
[Jun 9, 2025]



Closure of all Rémabec and Arbec plants for an indefinite period.

One of Canada’s largest lumber producers, Groupe Rémabec, will temporarily lay off most of its workers as the industry faces rising United States duties and weakening demand.
  

The manufacturing division, Arbec Forest Products Inc., is shutting down indefinitely, leading to more than 1,000 immediate job cuts. The number may reach 1,400 in the coming weeks, according to a company statement that blamed “persistent imbalances in both access to the resource and international markets.”

Groupe Rémabec employs about 2,000 people and is headquartered in La Tuque, Quebec, about 300 kilometers north of Montreal.

President Donald Trump’s administration is poised to more than double the duties on Canadian softwood lumber. The U.S. currently levies countervailing and anti-dumping duties totalling 14.4 per cent, but those are poised to rise to 34 per cent, according to a Department of Commerce memo released in April.

Those are separate from any other tariffs the White House has implemented. Trump has talked about adding additional import taxes on foreign lumber.

U.S. customs deposits on lumber exports by Canadian sawmills total $10 billion, Rémabec said, with Arbec’s deposits representing an “astronomical amount.” This “reduces its competitiveness against its Canadian and American competitors, given the higher price of roundwood in Quebec,” the company said.

The company said it’s hoping for “a return to operations as soon as economic and structural conditions will allow it.”

Rémabec also said a “feeling of exasperation is widespread” in the Quebec forestry industry over regulations that have created “an increasingly unstable ecosystem, without predictability or coherence.” The Quebec government has been trying to modernize its forestry legislation to improve the business environment, but has faced concerns from Indigenous communities during the process.

“The softwood lumber dispute, combined with the uncertainty caused in particular by President Trump’s uncertainties, is forcing us to review our ways of doing things,” Quebec Forestry Minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina said in an email. “Of course, impediments to forestry activities can create tensions and supply issues.”
 

Source: financialpost.com



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