Canada has directed more than $4 million into a new robotics-enabled wood truss manufacturing facility in Clinton, Ontario — deploying federal manufacturing capital as US softwood tariffs above 35 per cent drive B.C. mills toward collapse and American builders source lumber from Europe and Russia to fill the supply gap. That is according to Natural Resources Canada, which confirmed the funding through its Investments in Forest Industry Transformation program at the BC Council of Forest Industries Annual Convention in Vancouver on Thursday, April 9.
The Clinton plant will use advanced robotics to improve production precision and reduce material waste, delivering structural trusses directly into Canada’s domestic construction supply chain. Atlas Engineered Products Ltd., headquartered in Nanaimo, British Columbia, operates across five provinces — British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick — with the Clinton site set to boost advanced manufacturing capacity in Canada’s engineered components sector amid acute supply chain stress.
It comes as B.C. Premier David Eby told 650 forestry delegates at the same Vancouver convention that Washington’s tariff regime had forced American builders to turn to unlikely suppliers — “from Russia of all places” — to meet demand, warning the cost was being passed directly to American consumers and driving up the price of homebuilding, as Wood Central reported from the COFI floor. Industry analysts at the same conference described B.C.’s timber supply chain as now in a full-scale crisis, driven by the combined weight of Washington’s duty regime and a domestic permitting environment that has choked off access to fibre — the industry’s primary cost driver.
Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said the forest sector and Canada’s national economic strength were “inseparable,” describing the IFIT investment as industrial-scale innovation designed to keep mills operating and push Canadian output further into engineered, value-added products.
And whilst Hodgson framed the investment in generational terms, Parliamentary Secretary Corey Hogan — who made the announcement in Vancouver — told the BC Council of Forest Industries that projects such as the Clinton plant were “creating good jobs, strengthening our supply chains” and building the foundations for Canada to compete on an increasingly contested global stage.
Wood Central understands that the IFIT program specifically targets the gap between development and commercial deployment — backing projects that have moved beyond proof of concept but require capital to reach manufacturing scale. Since August 2025, the Government of Canada has committed more than $2.35 billion in measures across the sector, covering program renewals, liquidity supports and worker protections, alongside the Buy Canadian policy directing federal procurement toward domestically manufactured wood and engineered wood products.
Prime Minister Mark Carney made the sector’s transformation a personal priority most visibly during an August 2025 tour of the Gorman Brothers Lumber sawmill in West Kelowna, British Columbia, where he announced $1.2 billion in sector support alongside a firm commitment that his government would not sacrifice any industry to US trade pressure.
Natural Resources Canada confirmed the $4 million IFIT commitment as part of the department’s ongoing investment in robotics-enabled timber manufacturing, with the Clinton facility set to add to Atlas’s five-province network once commissioned and to supply structural trusses into a domestic building program Ottawa says is now prioritising Canadian materials from mill to project site.
- To learn more about Canada’s Build Canada Homes strategy and its plans to fast-track 4,000 modular mass-timber homes on federal land, click here for Wood Central’s full coverage.
