[quote]OTTAWA — An international arbitration panel ruled Friday that two Canadian provinces have breached the terms of the 2006 Softwood Lumber Agreement with the United States.
The London Court of International Arbitration set a financial penalty of $59.4 million US that Canada will have to pay if it doesn’t resolve the dispute.
“The tribunal agreed that a number of provincial assistance programs put into place by Quebec and Ontario circumvent the Softwood Lumber Agreement and breach the deal struck by the United States and Canada in 2006,” said U.S. Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk in a statement on Friday. “This result is important for U.S. workers, firms and our softwood lumber industry. We look forward to Canada working quickly to implement the decision of the tribunal.”
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This can be resolved by saying fuck you america and sending our lumber and oil to china. At greatly increased profits to us I’m sure. Or we can deduct the fine from their outstanding power debts
What ever happened to the 5 Billion they owed us for illegally taxing our soft lumber exports up until 2006? I can’t remember exactly what the situation was with that but like a drama queen, they’re definitely a making big stink about their petty little problems now.
Definitely would be much more beneficial to Canada - sell to China. They are more eager.
It is certainly a troubling development. I would prefer to let the appeal/court process play itself out before we declare an all out trade war with our American neighbours. A diplomatic solution is preferable in the interim in my opinion. Our economy is intertwined with the USA. If we engage in an all out trade war I think we will get bloodied. Hopefully we catch a break on appeal.
Lets fight wood with oil.We could sell the oil to China if we build a pipeline to our coast. WHOOPS, sorry. Maybe we could send our Alberta oil through a pipeline to the states and ask the Yanks to send some of it to china for us.
While Canada and the US are the parties to the dispute it is really about how Quebec and Ontario have provided assistance programs to their forest industries. Lumber from those provinces will be subject to penalties. This does not appear to be a BC issue or a decision that will have an effect on this province, other than perhaps by making BC lumber more competitive in the US since it won’t be subject to penalties.
Forestry is after all a provincial jurisdiction. I’m not sure that we should be too up in arms about this. For all we know the Quebec and Ontario governments should be following the BC example to avoid these types of disputes.
RE Travenn “BC lumber more competitive in U.S since it won’t be subject to penalties” A third wood lawsuit was filed by u.s last week. This time BC is the defendant. 500 million. Check the globe and mail business pages. Sorry, I do not have the compfuser skills to create link.
The upcoming BC case involves very different issues than the Quebec and Ontario decision. The latter was about provincial programs in those two provinces while the one with BC is about mountain pine beetle volumes. Here’s the Globe article you’re probably referring to:
Pat Bell does not seem too concerned about the upcoming arbitration, calling the American complaint “ludicrous”. He notes that unlike in previous disputes an interim tariff has not been applied to BC wood. Here’s some more background.
Seems a bit premature to be talking about using energy exports as some kind of weapon in a trade war, even leaving aside doubts about how exporting unrefined tar to China via Enbridge’s proposed pipeline is supposed to pressure the US lumber industry into withdrawing or no longer filing complaints about lumber exports to the US.
Thanks for noticing Smurfette. I paid a young local to teach me about attachments. Since i have never blogged before, i asked the young man to explain the ins and outs of HTMN. One piece of advice he gave was to avoid being ,or being perceived as,a troll. He went to wikipedia to define troll. I noticed the picture beside the definition was PLA’s moniker, who had posted a response to my entry. I can assure you my intention is not to be a troll and my apologies to PLA . There was nothing troll-like about his response.Now can we be friends.
