The Canadian forest industry, particularly that of BC, has a great future - in the United States. BC's supply of timber has been significantly reduced by the pine beetle. In addition, it has some of the highest logging costs and is under constant pressure from the environmental lobby. By moving operations to the American south, BC forest companies are able to avoid tariffs and duties, operate their mills at far higher margins and obtain ready supplies of timber from both public and private sources. The days of using these companies as instruments of social policy are over given that the provincial government's power to reduce allowable cuts is now academic. By ignoring the advice of the industry at the outset of the beetle plague, the NDP doomed the BC forests and precipitated the move southward of it's industry's capital.. The tariffs and duties are simply the coup de grace.