Summer committee meeting on softwood lumber ‘waste of time and money,’ says Liberal MP

Liberal and Conservative MPs jousted Thursday over the need for another irregular mid-summer meeting of the House Trade Committee, this time on softwood lumber negotiations. After opposition members asked for it, the committee unanimously agreed to sit Thursday morning to be briefed by and question the top public servants on the softwood file, as an October deadline for possible trade penalties by the United States on Canadian lumber exporters creeps closer. However, Liberal MP Linda Lapointe (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, Que.) remarked that the meeting was a “waste of time and money,” given that the committee already completed a report on the same Canada-U.S. softwood lumber trade negotiations in June. Speaking to The Hill Times after the meeting, Ms. Lapointe said she had confidence that Canada’s negotiators were working hard to reach a deal with the U.S., and noted that the government’s top negotiator, Martin Moen, had testified during the meeting that the government was preparing a response to the recommendations in the committee’s June report. “It’s just politics that they asked us today to be here,” Ms. Lapointe said of the call from the opposition Conservative and NDP MPs for the unusual summer committee meeting. Most House committees stopped meeting regularly when the House rose for the summer in June. The Trade Committee members had also returned to Ottawa Aug. 3 after the opposition called for a meeting on government efforts to deal with imports of diafiltered milk and mislabelled broiler chickens, both of which are undermining farmers in Canada’s supply-managed industries. The calls on both occasions have come from all four Conservative and NDP members of the Trade Committee: NDP trade critic Tracey Ramsey (Essex, Ont.), Conservative trade critic Gerry Ritz (Battlefords-Lloydminster, Sask.), and Conservative MPs Randy Hoback (Prince Albert, Sask.), and Dave Van Kesteren (Chatham-Kent-Leamington, Ont.). Mr. Hoback took exception to Ms. Lapointe’s comment during the meeting, crying out “are you kidding me?” and prompting committee chair Mark Eyking, the Liberal MP for Sydney-Victoria, N.S., to remind him that Ms. Lapointe had the floor. “I can’t believe she’d say that, that she’d think 350,000 jobs in Canada weren’t worth an hour meeting,” Mr. Hoback told The Hill Times after the meeting, a reference to the size of Canada’s forestry sector. The meeting was needed to “highlight the fact that we needed to have a common consensus ,” and get answers to questions about the negotiations, he said. Industry groups for lumber exporters in Central Canada and British Columbia expressed different opinions on what the government’s priorities should be in the negotiations during the committee’s previous study on the issue. Richard Garneau, president and CEO of Central Canadian lumber producer Resolute Forest Products, told the committee that the recently expired softwood deal was harmful to Central Canadian producers. Susan Yurkovich, president of the B.C. Lumber Trade Council, told the committee that the last softwood agreement did work for her members, and a “modernized” version of that deal would as well. The last Canada-U.S. agreement on softwood lumber expired in October 2015, starting off a previously agreed upon one-year period before the U.S. can launch fresh trade penalties on Canadian lumber imports—which U.S. lumber producers say are indirectly subsidized by provincial governments—a move widely believed to be likely unless a deal can be reached first. The Canadian and U.S. governments issued a joint press release in June noting that the two sides had been “meeting intensively” on the issue. Mr. Moen told the committee that striking a deal by the mid-October deadline would be "challenging," though the government was committed to trying. He said that because stakeholders had indicated that no deal was better than a bad deal, Canada must prepare for the possibility that a deal won't be reached in time. Four of the committee’s 10 MPs—two from the opposition, two from the Liberal Party—were not present at the meeting, and had colleagues take their place. Mr. Ritz missed the meeting due to the recent death of his father, and Mr. Van Kesteren missed the meeting due to obligations in his constituency, according to their offices. Liberal MP Karen Ludwig (New Brunswick Southwest, N.B.) was in Moncton for a funding announcement, according to her office. The office of Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal (Surrey-Newton, B.C.) did not immediately provide an explanation for why he missed the meeting. Liberal MPs Chandra Arya (Nepean, Ont.) and Steven MacKinnon (Gatineau, Que.) and Conservative MPs Guy Lauzon (Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry, Ont.) and Todd Doherty (Cariboo-Prince George, B.C.) filled in for their colleagues. Mr. Doherty represents a northern B.C. riding reliant on the forestry sector. Mr. MacKinnon said forestry is the "backbone" of his region. Roundtable nixed The Liberal majority on the Trade Committee voted down a motion from Mr. Doherty to have the committee call on the government to establish a “roundtable” of federal, provincial, territorial, and industry leaders, including the trade minister, to find a “national position” on the softwood negotiations. Mr. Hoback argued in favour of the motion, as did Ms. Ramsey, who said the roundtable would ensure that voices from stakeholders big and small would be heard. Liberal MP Peter Fonseca (Mississauga East-Cooksville, Ont.) argued against, saying that the roundtable would only duplicate consultations already being done by the government officials working on the deal. peter@hilltimes.com @PJMazereeuw

Summer committee meeting on softwood lumber ‘waste of time and money,’ says Liberal MP

Linda Lapointe says the committee just finished a report on the topic in June.

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Summer committee meeting on softwood lumber ‘waste of time and money,’ says Liberal MP

Linda Lapointe says the committee just finished a report on the topic in June.

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