ABOUT THE CANADIAN WOOD COUNCIL
Founded in 1959, the Canadian Wood Council (CWC) is Canada’s unifying voice for the wood products industry. As a national federation of associations, our 14 members represent hundreds of manufacturers across the country. For over 60 years, we have supported our members by accelerating market demand for wood products and championed responsible leadership through excellence in codes, standards, and regulations. We also deliver technical knowledge for the construction sector through our market leading Wood WORKS! initiative.
The Canadian Wood Council (CWC) represents the Canadian wood products industry through a national federation of associations.
The Mission of the Council is to expand market access and increase demand for Canadian wood products through excellence in codes, standards, regulations and education.
The CWC’s vision is to be passionate, credible agents of change leading to an advanced and sustainable wood culture.
The CWC provides technical and knowledge transfer services relating to building codes, standards and regulations. The CWC is active in a technical capacity in all areas of the Regulatory System:
BUILDING CODES – CWC participates extensively in the development process of the Building Codes in Canada.
DESIGN STANDARDS – CWC holds the Secretariat for Canada’s wood design standard (CSA O86 “Engineering Design in Wood”), providing both technical expertise and administrative support for its development.
PRODUCT STANDARDS – CWC is involved in the development of Canadian, U.S. and international standards for its wood building product producers.
TEST STANDARDS – CWC is involved in developing Canadian, U.S. and international test standards in areas that affect wood products, such as fire performance.
MARKET DEVELOPMENT
A core role of the CWC is to act as the conduit for the transfer of technical knowledge for the people (builders, architects, engineers) who specify wood in construction. CWC does this by:
- Providing essential technical tools and field support needed to design with wood. This includes the development and distribution of technical manuals, web tools, design software and a HelpDesk option.
- Operating a pan-Canadian construction sector education program, with market partners, under the name of Wood WORKS!, Cecobois in Quebec.
- Publishing the Wood Design & Building magazine and magazine insert, as well as hosting a variety of awards programs and events.
The Wood WORKS! program plays a very important role in broadening wood’s use in construction by working closely with the building community and governments for wood’s broader use. Learn more at wood-works.ca.
STAKEHOLDER SUPPORT
CWC maintains close ties with members, potential members, companies and design professionals and provides these groups with a forum for discussion on issues of importance.
Careers with the Canadian Wood Council
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DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
We believe equity, diversity, and inclusion is a practice of ensuring persons of all characteristics can participate and achieve at CWC. Our main objective is to define and support a caring and inclusive culture in the workplace to foster creativity and openness, invite different backgrounds, strengths and perspectives, embrace other’s ideas and contributions, and as a result, make CWC more relevant and valuable to CWC members and the broader stakeholder group it interacts with.
We act by maintaining an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee that is responsible for implementing this policy and developing a strategic framework for putting this Action Plan into practice. The EDI Committee will develop specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely objectives that will ensure that progress is measurable so CWC can assess whether the Action Plan implementation is working. The EDI Committee will promote its work and continue to monitor, evaluate, and plan EDI initiatives and will work with management to update our policy as often as required.
