Suffering forestry producers are being taxed to pay for the Conservatives’ mismanagement of the softwood lumber agreement, Liberal MPs said today.
“The Conservatives put our forestry industry through job losses and now tax increases by mismanaging softwood lumber,” said Liberal International Trade Critic Scott Brison. “How can Canadian forestry workers have any trust in a government that’s too incompetent to defend their interests or follow their own trade agreements?”
After signing the Softwood Lumber Agreement in 2006 and giving $1 billion to our forestry competitors in the United States in order to buy trade peace, the US has since challenged Canada twice more. This week, the Conservative government failed in its case at the London arbitration panel, which ruled Canada must now impose a new $68 million tax on Canadian forest companies.
Yesterday in the House of Commons, Conservative Trade Minister Stockwell Day announced that he would comply with the ruling and introduce the new tax.
“Liberals have committed to concrete measures to help the lumber industry transform itself – but the Conservatives are only punishing them further,” said Alexandra Mendes, Liberal Critic for the Economic Development Agency for the Regions of Quebec.
Forestry producers in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan will have to pay the $68 million fine, adding to the misery of a sector that has shed jobs and seen sawmills closures in the wake of the Bloc Quebecois-supported Conservative softwood lumber agreement.
“Canadians deserve better,” Ms. Mendes concluded.
