No doubt about it. As far as the American lumber industry is concerned, Canada is their bitch. When Harpo's feckless trade min, David Emerson, folded Canada's hand and turned over to the US lumber companies a war chest in the hundreds of millions of dollars it was pretty obvious that we had just given our lunch money to the schoolyard bully. At that point it was only a matter of when, not if, they'd be back and, as expected, it wasn't long in coming.
The US Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, an outfit that sees fairness as an entirely one-sided issue (theirs in case you didn't figure that out), is howling mad at Harpo's national community development trust fund.
Although the Harpies have earmarked the meagre, one billion dollar fund for job retraining and community infrastructure programmes, America's Big Wood is claiming that the funds will somehow be used to reduce liabilities of Canadian forestry companies in violation of the 2006 Canada-US softwood lumber capitulation pact.
Wouldn't it be great to see Harper actually "stand up for Canada" and tell Washington to get lost? Let's face it kids, we're their biggest supplier of energy and the only one they can take for granted. Maybe it's time to tweak their attitudes just a tad.
ITA. when Canada's New Government made it clear so early that they were trying to be more submissive than Bush's Poodle, I lost any slight hope that I may have held for them.
ReplyDeleteTime to write to my MP again. :/
Oh, it's just one billion dollars Harper can give to the American lumber companies. I mean, what would've it have been used on anyway? All those mill workers out of work now with their mills closing?
ReplyDelete