PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Time for movement
on softwood dispute

by Dave Haggard

\ | Z \ ernment has to do a consider-
\ \/ i ably better job in paying more
wae | attention to what is happen-
ay \_/ ing between Canada and the

(J United States on the softwood
lumber dispute. After all, the forest indus-
try is the one of the country’s leading sec-
tors for employment, creating nearly 300,000
direct jobs. It is Canada’s largest source of
exports earnings. Lumber is a major part of
that and is the backbone of many communi-
ties across Canada.

The Liberals haven’t done much in the
past Nee or two to help the industry unite
itself and it’s not doing much these days
either. It seems to be content to fiddle while
Rome burns.

It’s hard to believe that there can be a so-
called Free Trade Agreement of the Ameri-
cas summit in Quebec City, and nearly noth-
ing is said by our government about the
plight of Canada’s softwood lumber industry
which is now seriously threatened.

These days, in addition to the B.C. Lum-
ber Trade Council and the Free Trade Lum-
ber Council, it seems like the loudest voices
making Canada’s case are coming from U.S.
consumer associations and retailers and not

| E think that the federal gov-
q

fay
|

our own federal

government. t
Home Depot is
speakin out

against the Coali-
tion for Fair Lum-
ber Imports, the
lobby group that’s
pushing the U.S.
government to
impose counter-
vailing duties and
anti-dumping
charges against
Canadian lumber.

It notes that
Canadian  soft-
woods and south-
ern radiata pine
are used for differ-
ent needs. Ifit can’t
a hold of our wood .
at a fair price
Home Depot will
go to Europe or elsewhere to get replace-
ment products.

The National Association of Home
Builders told American president George
Bush that tariffs and other charges will
hurt the U.S. industry and add up to $5,000
U.S. to the price of a house if the coalition
succeeds. They say U.S. companies are bul-
lying Canada around and that the softwood
lumber agreement was bad economic and
trade policy.

The U.S. Trade Commission will decide,
by May 16, if there will be full hearings on
the countervail. Time is moving fast. In
another 9 months a countervailing duty
could be in place.

The Canadian government has to get its

butt in gear and build
Canada’s case in find-
ing solutions. It
should listen closel
to the industry’s ca
for special envoys on
the issue and not drop
the idea. Even Wey-
erhaeuser, which has
lumber interests on
both sides of the bor-
der, seems to havea
louder voice in calling
for a special envoy
than the Liberals.

Instead Interna-
tional Trade Minister
Andrew Pettigrew has
given up on envoys
and Chretien couldn't

et anything out of

eorge Bush in Que-
bec City.

They spent more
time talking about helpin the United
States exploit oil and natural gas reserves
in Canada than they did speaking about
the state of the forest industry in North
America. F :

The Liberals have to begin soon negotiat-
ing an interim agreement with the Ameri-
cans while the Bush administration further
investigates the coalition’s case. It has to
balance the needs of lumber peodue a all
over Canada and work toward a level play-
ing field for everyone.

'e don’t support any Seresmeny or tactic
that treats some areas of Canada different
than others. And we insist on fair and open
markets for all wood products manufactur-
ers on both sides of the border.

LANDS AND FOREST,

Greens assist Americans
in softwood lumber. war.
by Kim Pollock

ust when we thought it was safe to go

| back in the woods — it’s back!

| What’s back? The Canada-U.S. soft-

_. wood dispute, a movie that has been

rerun more times than Gone With the
a Wind, the Wizard of Oz, or Fantasia,

; that’s what’s back.

We've all been there before, of course. We’re
used to U.S. Senators, the U.S. Coalition and
the U.S. Department of Commerce. Those are
fierce opponents, certainly, but ones we have
seen before.

This time there’s a new twist: Anti-Canadian
greens. Recently they teamed up with long-time
U.S. Fair Lumber Trade Coalition mouthpiece
Max Baucus, Democrat Senator from Montana,
to denounce Canada’s forest practices.

Talk about a marriage of convenience.

Baucus is, of course, a veteran of Canada-
U.S. softwood diplomacy. For years, he’s been
telling anyone who would listen that Canadian
lumber is heavily subsidized because most of
our harvesting takes place on publicly-owned
Crown land, rather than on private land as:is
the case in the States. That’s because he has
long been the spokesman in Washington for
timber interests.

But now he has new, strange bedfellows.
Flanked by representatives of the powerful
Natural Resources Defense Council and other
American greens, Baucus claims that Canada is
subsidized not only economically, but environ-
mentally.

Without as much as a blush, Baucus claims
that: Canadian logging practices are making
endangered species out of grizzly bears, salmon
and other forest-dwellers; Canadian companies
are forced to harvest whether they need to or
not; and our lack of a formal endangered-
species law amounts to a subsidy because U.S.
firms have to deal with their Endangered
Species Act.

In fact, these charges are baseless. The two
countries have vastly different forest manage-
ment systems, making any comparison pretty
much one of apples and potatoes. In Canada,
for example, some 94 percent of the forest is
Crown-owned; in the U.S. 64 percent is private.

Canadian companies
reforest a larger than is
harvested annually. In
British Columbia, where
the greens allege the
most serious “abuses”,
replanting has exceeded
harvest every year since
1987. We harvest about
one percent of the total
available forest and we
will every year for the
| foreseeable future.
That’s a far cry from
the scene in the Southern U.S. There, even U.S.
Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck concedes
that a surplus of annual growth over harvest
has been turned around over the past 20 years,
with timber harvests actually doubling.

As a result of the drastic shutdowns of pub-
licly-owned forests in the U.S. Pacific North-
west, the South now provides about two-thirds
of American timber. In

to “shoot, shovel and shut up” rather than risk
Endangered Species Act measures on their hold-
anaes No amount of “tough”U.S. law could stop
them.

In fact, the rapid assault on the South’s
forests, coupled with the removal of public
forests in the Pacific region, help account for the

increased demand for Canadian logs and lumber
south of the border. Twenty years ago, for
instance, 15 percent of the U.S.’s timber came
from national forests and that’s now down to 5
percent.

As result of these timber shortages, U.S. buy-
ers brought in Canadian lumber, especially from
the exempt provinces not touched by the Soft-

“ wood Lumber Agreement. Sawmills in Washing-
ton and Oregon, ironically, also brought in thou-
sands of cubic metres of Canadian sawlogs.

Indeed, we might even suggest that far from
amounting to a subsidy, lower Canadian timber
prices - if they are lower, since, again, it’s diffi-

cult to say with any pre-
cision — simply reflect

the South, forest lands
are almost all privately
owned; so is what’s left
available for harvest in
the West. Compared to
those private lands,
Canada’s forest prac-
tices stack up very, very
well.

In the South, thou-
sands of hectares of “for-
est” are in fact trans-
formed cotton and
tobacco fields. The trees

Anti-Canadian greens have
recently teamed up with a
Coalition mouthpiece to
denounce Canadian forest
practices and assist the
American case

greater supply. There
is no question, then,
that the U.S. greens are
talking through their
hats when it comes to
relative environmental
impacts. You might
expect American green
groups to side with the
Americans on the lum-
ber dispute.

What’s harder to
explain, though, is the

are planted in evenly-
spaced rows and doused
with herbicides and pesticides to turn out a uni-
form crop, mainly of pulp chips. On the five mil-
lion or so hectares owned by International
Paper and other private forest lands, thesé pine
“forests” are turned over for pulp in eight to15
years. x

These, then, are the forest practices defended

and promoted by green groups across the bor-
der. It’s also what is being by former U.S. presi-
dent Jimmy Carter, himself a southern private
woodlot owner.

In addition, when it comes to forest fauna,
where are all the U.S. cariboo, grizzly bears,
wolves and other species whose protection the
U.S. laws are supposedly ensuring? In fact, in
recent years many Canadian species have been
transplanted to the U.S. to replace those wiped
out regardless of U.S. law.

Again in the South, when preservation was
being considered to protect dwindling stocks of
cockaded woodpeckers, many landowners chose

Canadian green groups
‘ who would destroy
Canadian communities and jobs by standing up
for the U.S. Yet there were the Western Canada
Wilderness Committee and others, cheering on
Baucus and his U.S. green allies. “Our industry
is greatly subsidized,” said WCWC’s Joe Foy, no
doubt an economic expert.

Perhaps we should be asking other Canadian
green groups what their view is and getting
them to state publicly whose side they are on.
Many green groups currently enjoy public and
government support in Canada. I wonder how
Canadians would look on groups who take their
money, yet actively campaign to sabotage our
leading export sector. Together with logging
companies that export their private-land tim-
ber, they are the selfish enemies of Canadian
forest-sector workers.

Kim Pollock is the Director of Environment and

Public Policy for I.W.A. Canada.

eee eee ee.

4/LUMBERWORKER/April, 2001

ae