NEWS: US launches softwood lumber complaint

As reported by the Canadian Press yesterday, "The U.S. government has launched arbitration proceedings (on the September 2006 softwood lumber agreement with Canada)...Once the U.S. formally files its complaint -- expected in a couple of weeks -- each side has 30 days to nominate one arbitrator and jointly choose a chair for the panel, with a final, binding decision issued six months after that...Schwab said that in addition to the arbitration proceeding, she has asked the U.S. Commerce Department to step up monitoring of the agreement and collect information on Canadian compliance."

A Canadian Press story back on March 31, 2007 stated, "Some critics attacked the deal as administratively unworkable and a sellout designed to give the new Tory government a victory that eluded its Liberal predecessors and ingratiate it with the U.S. administration...Some industry observers have doubted the agreement will survive past the two-year minimum notice period allowed before either country can terminate it."

Susan Riley wrote in the Ottawa Citizen on April 23, 2007, "The new softwood lumber deal, which was supposed to buy seven years' peace on this vexing issue -- and herald a new era of Canada-U.S. chumminess -- is in trouble after only six months. The Americans claim B.C. lumber companies are breaking the new rules and are using $500 million in forgone duties (our money) to press their case. Turncoat Trade Minister David Emerson, who worked on the file for both Tories and Liberals, was nowhere to be seen last week."

The Council of Canadians stated in an April 2006 media release, "As the Harper government seeks to deepen Canada's economic and political ties to the United States through the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, the Council of Canadians calls on the prime minister to recognize the unwillingness of, in his words, Canada's "best friend" to abide by international agreements."

Trade Campaigner Jean-Yves Lefort stated at that time, "NAFTA has failed in its promise to level the playing field and now the federal government wants to compound that failure by submitting to the Bush Administration's self-serving refusal to recognize NAFTA panel rulings on softwood lumber. If the United States won't respect NAFTA, what makes Prime Minister Harper think they will act any differently under the Security and Prosperity Partnership negotiated at the recent Cancun meeting of the three NAFTA leaders?"

Brent Patterson, Director of Organizing and Campaigns, The Council of Canadians