U.S. lumber lobby needs to check facts

The U.S. lumber industry lobby is harming efforts to reach a solution to the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute by misrepresenting the state of the B.C. forest industry, particularly lumber production in BC's Interior. Material prepared by the U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, obtained by the BC Lumber Trade Council, shows that the U.S. side is misusing lumber production figures to show a dramatic 56 percent increase in Interior lumber production. A look at the true Statistics Canada data reveals that this is not the case at all, in fact, Interior lumber production has only modestly increased by 10.3 percent between January and September 2002 over the same period in 2001.

"The U.S. Coalition should be held to account. These figures are important and given their in-depth knowledge of this file, it is amazing to me that this glaring error in their numbers was not caught by them," said John Allan, President of the BC Lumber Trade Council. "Production increased in 2002 as a direct result of the 27% duties imposed by the U.S. Lumber companies in B.C. are fighting for their survival by reducing their unit costs through increased production in an effort to maintain their customer base. The Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports can only blame themselves for the destabilization that has occurred in the North American lumber market as a result of production increases in the U.S. as well as Canada and imports from third countries," added Allan.

"The U.S. lumber industry now realizes that the duties they sought have been an abject failure. They have to realize once and for all that this issue is not about subsidies but rather that the Canadian lumber industry is more efficient and productive," Allan said. Allan also refutes the U.S. allegation that BC producers are flooding the U.S. with "cheap bug-killed timber at a tiny fraction of the real value." In addition, the U.S. lumber industry is also completely off base by saying that "large Canadian producers are trying to drive smaller producers out of business and to hurt U.S. producers". In fact, all Canadian producers are working hard to reduce their costs in order to survive the punishing U.S. trade duties. The BC Lumber Trade Council does agree with the U.S. lumber lobby in one area - we look forward to resuming negotiations and remain open to creative ideas that will lead to a long term resolution of this dispute. BC Lumber Trade Council