Forest 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.  It is Canada's national standard for sustainable forest management and has been maintained in an open public process by the Technical Committee.  It 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 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.

CSA SFM Standard for Woodlots and Other Small Areas is more recent national standard of Canada and applies to forests less than 4000 hectares in size.

Chain of Custody Standard.  The CSA forest certification program includes the PEFC Chain of Custody and product labels to link the CSA forest mangement standard to forest products and consumers.  This provides a measure of the portion of a wood product that has been sourced from a certified forest and assurance that any uncertified portion is from legal and non-controversial sources.