FREDERICTON — The federal government has committed up to $50 million toward a proposed digital forestry centre in New Brunswick designed to improve how the industry tracks wood supplies and anticipates threats including wildfire and pests.

Natural Resources Canada announced the investment Wednesday for the New Brunswick Strategic Innovation Centre in Digital Forestry, led by the Northern Hardwoods Research Institute in collaboration with ResearchNB.

Funding remains conditional

The federal commitment is not yet an unconditional transfer. Natural Resources Canada says it remains subject to project approval and final due diligence.

The proposed centre has an estimated total value of approximately $86 million. The government release did not provide an opening date, construction timetable or final breakdown of the remaining financing.

Those conditions matter: the announcement establishes Ottawa’s intended contribution, but it does not mean the full centre is funded, operating or producing results.

A digital model of the province’s forests

The centre is intended to build digital infrastructure that helps companies and other forestry stakeholders identify, track and match fibre supplies with the manufacturing needs of mills and other facilities.

The Canadian Press reported that ResearchNB expects the work to include a digital twin of New Brunswick’s forests. The model could be used to help predict where wildfires or pest infestations may emerge, while artificial-intelligence tools would support planning across the forestry supply chain.

Natural Resources Canada says the New Brunswick pilot could become a model for other regions. Whether it does will depend on the project passing its remaining approvals and demonstrating useful results.

Forestry sector faces several pressures

The federal department says Canada’s forest sector supports nearly 200,000 jobs, underpins roughly 300 rural, remote and Indigenous communities and contributed $23.5 billion to gross domestic product in 2024.

Government and industry officials have identified tightening fibre supplies, wildfire and pest damage, operating costs, weak pulp prices and U.S. tariffs among the pressures facing the sector. The planned centre is intended to improve supply certainty and operational efficiency rather than directly subsidize individual mills.

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson also said further details of a national forest-sector strategy will appear in Budget 2026. No final strategy was released with Wednesday’s funding announcement.

Sources

Lead image: autumn landscape in Keswick, New Brunswick, photographed by Martin Cathrae, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Illustrative file photograph; it does not depict the proposed centre.