International Trade committee  Honestly, I am unsure. I know that the Canadians, both from the industry and from the federal government and the provinces, have been happy to speak with the Americans about this over the past year, even pre-dating the expiration of the agreement, but you need two people to be at

International Trade committee  Thank you for the opportunity.

International Trade committee  I know that the provincial government is investing in it, and it does appear that there's an opportunity there. The one challenge is that other producers are closer to that market—the Australians and New Zealanders—and if it's a price-sensitive market, there may be a challenge, b

International Trade committee  I would agree. As Cam said, and in your comments too, the Americans want to limit access, but it makes no sense for them to completely block access for Canadian exports to the U.S. Really, what this has been about for many years is what market share they feel they're willing to k

International Trade committee  Thank you for the question. To be honest, I thought the agreement that we had in the past was reasonable in the sense that it offered both flexibility to the different provinces and access to the market. I do think that there were some things that could have been done to creat

International Trade committee  One of the concerns I had at the time was that a previous agreement actually had created an incentive to produce value-added goods and secondary products. That became a disincentive under the last agreement. There are certain products and certain species that are produced in B.C.

International Trade committee  I think one of the opportunities here—and I think Cameron has touched on it—is there's this highly interdependent web between the competitiveness of the sector, the value of the forest, and what that allows us to do in managing that forest. I think there are opportunities to dive

International Trade committee  It's the trend we've seen in B.C. In my perspective, in my opinion, it has actually weakened our sector in some ways, because it's made it more dependent. When one company faces challenges, those impact or ripple throughout the broader forest sector economy. It's also something

International Trade committee  Is that question directed towards me?

International Trade committee  Okay. Here's my shot at answering that question. I think from a political will perspective, it is promising in the sense that both the Prime Minister and the President have made commitments to try to negotiate such an agreement. I worry that this probably isn't the highest priori

International Trade committee  It depends. It can be context-specific. We have a market pricing system or market-based system in B.C. Given that so much of our production still goes to the U.S., in some ways the value of our timber floats with what we get for that timber in the U.S. market, even if there is an

International Trade committee  It's a good question. One of the outcomes of both a quota and an export tax—the purpose behind these is to restrict Canadian supply—would be to raise U.S. prices. Both the export tax and a quota will do it. In both cases, the challenge is if you are a small producer and you don

International Trade committee  Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee. I've shared my comments with you ahead of time, so I can be briefer. I'm drawing on both my research experience as well as my experience from being involved in various rounds of the dispute, going back a