CSA Standards

The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) is an organization familiar to Canadians and known worldwide for it's long rich history in standards development.  CSA maintains an expanding suite of standards, products and training that help to address environmental management issues such as greenhouse gas quantification, life cycle assessment and the environmental labeling of products.  More information about CSA and the environment can be found on the CSA website.  

CSA SFM Standard was first published in 1996 following more than a year of extensive public participation and development by a Technical Committee comprised of forest producers, scientists, academics, and representatives of government, aboriginals, labour unions, consumers and environmentalists.  This balanced matrix approach to developing and maintaining standards is a requirement of CSA.  The standard has been maintained in an open public process by the Technical Committee and was first reviewed and revised in 2002. A second review and revision to the standard was completed in early 2009 following nearly 3 years of effort. The CSA SFM system includes a Chain of Custody standard that forest managers or log/fibre processors can use to have their tracking system certified by independent third party certifiers.

The CSA SFM Standard provides for independent verification that forestry organizations conduct forest planning and practices sustainably, assuring customers that the high threshold set by the standards have been met (refer to guidance from the Competition Bureau of Canada).  As the largest national forest certification system in the world, the standard has received international recognition and acceptance.