The softwood lumber disagreement that was a factor in bringing down Squamish's largest lumber mill and putting Tree Farm License 38 loggers out of work is back in the news as the powerful U.S. lumber lobby is again insisting Canada subsidizes lumber production.
A group of influential lumber producers in the U.S. isn't pleased with this latest decision. Time and again, various trade bodies have ruled the lumber entering the U.S. from Canada is not subsidized and does not harm the U.S. industry and yet this strangely influential lobby group seems to find another way to continue forcing Canadian lumber producers to pay high duties and tariffs to get lumber into the U.S. for sale.
This latest decision indicating Canadian lumber isn't harming the American industry comes from an extraordinary challenge panel under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The panel's decision comes a year after the same conclusion was reached by a regular panel.
The American producers trying to keep Canadian wood out of the U.S. have got to get it by now. Too many times trade experts have ruled against their argument.
Alas, they don't get it, as now there is talk of the American producers taking on their own government in trying to have NAFTA declared unconstitutional.
Give me a break.Canadians produce superior product and production costs are lower. It is as simple as that. Our more competitively priced lumber is not priced the way it is because a government hand out keeps the final price artificially low.
Our American trade partners need to understand this and just wave the white flag.
Americans do many things much better than we do and our trade agreements have caused whole industries in Canada to flee our country, but when it comes to lumber production, we have it dialed and the sooner Canada takes serious steps to make that clear, the sooner our nation can recover the billions of dollars the American government is basically stealing from our lumber industry. Once the unreasonable tariffs and duties are removed, the west coast forestry industry might regain certainty.
The long-term survival of the logging companies still able to operate in Squamish hinges on this protracted dispute being resolved sooner than later.
For the sake of the local loggers still trying to make a go of it in the forests around Squamish, we need to settle this trade dispute once and for all.
