Canadian timber execs upbeat on softwood talks

Canadian timber executives gave an upbeat assessment on Thursday of talks in the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber trade dispute, but said a permanent settlement was still a long way off. Senior trade officials from Ottawa and Washington met on Thursday for a third day in the trade spat that has seen the United States slap a 19.3 percent duty on Canadian shipments of pine, spruce and other lumber used in construction. Representatives of both sides have used the closed-door meetings to explain their arguments over whether Canadian timber producers are subsidized. U.S. sawmills say they are, but Canada denies it.

Canada supplies nearly a third of the softwood lumber used in the United States. "We think the attitudes in this meeting and the discussions in this meeting were constructive. We think there will be another meeting in the next few months to take it to another level," said David Emerson, chief executive of Canfor Corp. , Canada's largest lumber producer. "While we're nowhere near a final solution, we're certainly on the road to what could hopefully be a constructive outcome," Emerson told reporters in a conference call with other industry officials. Representatives of producers in both countries were at the the hotel in Toronto where the government officials met, but were not directly involved in the talks, which Emerson said involved sharing information not negotiating. At the heart of the dispute are the countries' differing land-ownership traditions.

In Canada nearly all forest land is publicly owned by provincial governments. In the United States the forests are largely in private hands. U.S. lumber producers allege Canada's provinces aid their companies by charging below-market rates to cut trees, and have demanded structural changes that would make the Canadian system much the same as in the United States. Industry officials said British Columbia, which produces nearly half the Canadian softwood shipped to the United States, outlined changes it was considering to its "stumpage fee" system but the presentation was not meant as a negotiating offer. The officials discounted concern the softwood trade issue would be ignored by the United States in the wake of the deadly suicide attacks on New York and Washington. The attacks, however, has prompted the Canadian producers to suspend a public relations campaign aimed at U.S. consumers who they claim will suffer through higher prices if the duty charges are not dropped.