Harper to push ahead with softwood deal _____________________________________________
news.yahoo.com
By Randall Palmer
1 hour, 26 minutes ago
The government has won enough support from the country's lumber industry to push ahead with a softwood trade agreement with the United States, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday.
Harper said he would submit legislation to implement the deal to the House of Commons in the fall. He said it would be a matter of confidence, meaning the minority Conservative government could be brought down if the bill is defeated.
"I'm pleased to announce today that we have received a clear majority of support from companies in all regions," Harper told reporters, reading from a prepared speech.
"Canada's government will proceed with implementation of this agreement when Parliament resumes sitting this fall."
If passed, the agreement is expected to end years of bitter disputes that had soured relations between the two countries.
The Harper government had given the lumber industry until late Monday to back the agreement, which will return $4.3 billion , or about 80 percent of the duties collected by the United States, in exchange for managed trade.
U.S. duties would be replaced by Canadian taxes and quotas on its own exports, designed to keep lumber prices in the United States from dropping too low.
The agreement, finalized on July 1, originally said that a condition for implementation was that Canadian lumber firms representing 95 percent of duties paid had to sign on to the deal and that all litigation be dropped.
Harper told Reuters in an interview that the United States was agreeable to adjusting both requirements.
"The 95 percent threshold is only a target set by the government of Canada. It's not binding in any way.... The Americans are aware that we may make changes to that."
He said the government had a "strong majority" of support from the industry but would not release the actual number for a few days, "until we do some final confirmations."
Asked if the United States was okay with not all companies dropping litigation, he said: "That's correct."
Harper said in his formal statement that the agreement would end years of costly legal wrangling and give the battered lumber industry a needed boost.
"As such, and because of the fiscal measures, the vote on this agreement will be a confidence measure," Harper said. That means that if the legislation is defeated in the House of Commons the government will fall and there will be a new election. The minority Conservatives do not have enough seats in Parliament to pass the legislation without support from opposition parties.
The main opposition Liberal Party had strongly criticized the original deal. But they are loathe to go to an election this autumn because they are in a leadership race of their own and have softened their rhetoric, though they have not yet officially said they will vote for it.
"We don't have to make that decision until the fall," interim Liberal leader Bill Graham told reporters at the Liberal's caucus meeting in Vancouver. But he noted that criticism of the deal had forced some improvements.
Initial industry rejection of the deal led Ottawa to agree to several measures that appear to have appeased industry demands, including a provision that critics complained would have allowed the U.S. to unfairly opt out of the deal.
The U.S. industry said it welcomed Canada's confirmation that it plans to implement the agreement by October 1.
The U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports chairman Steve Swanson said, "the U.S. lumber industry continues to have significant concerns about certain aspects of the agreement, but nonetheless supports the initiative of both governments to settle this dispute."
Canadian firms exported $7.4 billion in softwood lumber such as spruce and pine to the United States last year, where it is used in the construction industry.
(Additional reporting by Louise Egan in Ottawa, Sophie Walker in Washington and Allan Dowd in Vancouver) |
