It is difficult in Port Alberni not to equate the announcement that American president Donald Trump has slapped a 20 percent tariff on Canada’s major softwood lumber companies with the flood of raw logs that sail out of the Alberni Inlet every week.
Trump has decided the Canadian government is subsidizing softwood lumber north of the border to the detriment of American companies, and he’s proclaimed taxing Canadian lumber companies is the best way to deal with the perceived subsidy.
The two subjects are different—one involves lumber that has already been milled and the other logs destined for foreign production—but they carry a common theme in the Alberni Valley: lost jobs. And people are worried that Trump’s announcement will have not just a trickle-down effect in B.C., but a flood.
The time is long past that Port Alberni has provided a plethora of well-paying forestry jobs, but the region’s economy is still inextricably linked to forestry, whether raw or finished product. It is imperative that we pay attention to the softwood lumber issue, and speak up.
Could Canada provide more jobs for British Columbians in particular if they kept raw logs at home and invested in more processing and manufacturing facilities? The arguments in favour of sending our logs over the border—by millions of board feet per year—are getting more difficult to support as local forestry workers are laid off and mills lay quiet.
The softwood lumber argument between countries has been going on for decades, but there has been no signed deal in place for two years.
Some say this is Trump’s first shot across the bow, so to speak, when it comes to North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) re-negotiations. Let’s hope our own country’s leader has an answering shot that is equally as powerful.
— Alberni Valley News