International Trade committee  Your riding is not unique, unfortunately.

International Trade committee  Certainly it is something that has affected the industry across the country. So I'm talking to all employees in the industry, all 240,000 people who continue to be employed in the industry. I would say that that these deals help to diversify our markets. It gets us away from our dependence on the U.S. market, and we've seen what over-dependence on one big market can do.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is always a pleasure to appear before you to share our views. It is a pleasure to be here today to present on the Canada-Japan trade partnership. If you looked at our testimony over the past five years or so, you would see that the industry has gone through some fairly significant economic challenges.

International Trade committee  We ship $1.4 billion worth of product to Japan every year, and $935 million of that is wood products. There may be some small amounts of raw stuff going there, but certainly none of our members, and I'm not aware of any... It's primarily a lumber market, so even of that $935 million, there are some small parts of it that are panels, and plywoods and veneers, but the bulk of that is two-by-fours, a traditional kind of lumber play.

International Trade committee  I don't know. The raw log debate has got a number of nuances to it. It's a provincial policy, so I can't really speak to it. Obviously, what's happening is that some of the provinces are deciding they'd rather keep a mill running and people hauling logs, and if that means they have to send some of those trees over in their raw state, that's what they're going to do.

International Trade committee  I have not, no, but I would concur with the conclusion.

International Trade committee  No. We have not done a study. When we look at the marketplace, we've been there for over 40 years. It's a very important marketplace to us. For many years, it's been the second most important marketplace for us, aside from the U.S. market. The softwood lumber dispute shows how important it is for us to grow our markets in other places.

International Trade committee  That's right. Yes.

International Trade committee  If I take your question and move back toward that raw log, how can we move up the value chain in some respects? I think the one challenge with Japan is that it is a mature marketplace in the sense that they know how to build with wood, they know they're using the best kinds of wood we have.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. As I said in my opening remarks, we're an export based industry, and so we're shipping well over $25 billion of our product outside the country every year. The big export producers are right across the country, from B.C. right out to the east coast. As I said, this is a global marketplace and there's only so much supply out there, and certainly we're seeing a constriction of supply as a result of things like the pine beetle in British Columbia and Alberta.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. A number of the companies have helped by sending lumber, and there's certainly been a partnership with the Canadian government as well. It has helped significantly with some money to help them rebuild. A lot of it is relationship building. We've had a relationship, as I've said, for the more than 40 years we've been in the country, and so there are some significant commercial relationships and partnerships there already.

International Trade committee  I think the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a very important initiative, and obviously the Canadian government has signalled it would like to be at that table, as has the Japanese government. There is some pushback, obviously, and some are trying to prevent us from being at the table.

International Trade committee  Yes, they do. The MFN, or most favoured nations, are all in that zero to 7.5% range. It's pretty much equal for all of us across the board. What this will do is drop it down to zero for us and obviously put us at a competitive advantage compared to those who still have their tariffs in place.

International Trade committee  I'm very wary of talking about subsidies in the forest products industry when the U.S. is involved. I can't speak to that. I don't know what the other industries are doing. I certainly know what our industry is doing to make itself more competitive in that marketplace. We're building on the long history of already being there.

International Trade committee  Two things are happening in the U.S. market. They've stopped building houses. That's the biggest problem for us. The problem when they stop building houses hits you on the wood side, because that's what they build the houses out of. But that's also usually the first indicator of a downturn in their economy more broadly.