B.C. Premier David Eby says he is frustrated that help for the province’s softwood lumber industry was not included in the federal government’s $1.5-billion relief package for tariff-hit industries.
On Monday, the federal government rolled out a series of fresh relief measures worth $1.5 billion for Canada’s tariff-hit steel, aluminum and copper tariffs, ministers Melanie Joly and Evan Solomon said.
The U.S. currently imposes a 50 per cent tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum, along with a 50 per cent tariff on certain copper products from Canada.
Eby told reporters on Monday that he tried to find the information on softwood lumber, but discovered it was once again left off the list as a tariff-affected industry.
“I don’t know what it’s going to take really to get the bureaucrats and the ministers in Ottawa to recognize that softwood lumber employs more people in Canada than steel and auto parts combined,” Eby added.
“It is a massive industry. In British Columbia, it is being decimated by completely unfair tariffs out of the United States, which includes tariffs on value-added products.”
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Eby said in November that he was confident that the federal government understands the importance of the logging industry to communities both large and small across the province.
He said on Monday that he is going to continue to push to raise the federal government’s awareness around softwood lumber and its crucial role in Canada’s economy.
“My sincere hope is that softwood is so important that they’re preparing a fully separate, comprehensively funded announcement, but my sneaking suspicion is that yet again a core industry for Canadians has been left off the list and I struggle to understand why,” Eby added.
Joly said that because the tariffs are different and they affect industries differently, the relief packages also have to be different.
But Eby said he still struggles to understand why softwood gets treated so differently from those other industries.
“It has been the case that the softwood tariffs have been around for a long time and the industry has struggled with the Americans on this for many decades now, and there may be a sense of complacency about that as a result in Ottawa,” Eby said.
“We have worse access right now to the U.S. market than Europe, than Russia. And as a result, those two markets are sending more wood into the United States than Canada is right now. It makes absolutely no sense.”
Eby said he wants to see the federal government priortize discussions of softwood lumber in the trade negotiations and to recognize how much of an impact the tariffs are having.
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