Them Timbers Are Splitting

Like a bad piece of wood left out to the elements, the softwood lumber deal that our then newly-minted Conservative government was crowing about is starting to come apart, with David Emerson now threatening the industry.

Harper is trying to play it up, in an effort to play "good cop" to Emerson's incredibly ill-played "bad cop" routine.

Frankly this government is starting to sound like a stereotypical abusive spouse - beats the tar out of their partner, then comes around later with some kind of apology. It's a pretty sad state of affairs, really - but not terribly surprising. Stephen Harper, along with much of the "core" of the CPC, comes out of Alberta - a province where "listening" is a skill the government is missing in spades.

On the softwood agreement, I'm not hopeful that a substantively different deal can be reached with the current US government, but that doesn't mean I think that this agreement reflects Canada's interests either. First of all, it places artificial caps on Canada's exports (in spite of a "free trade" agreement), second, paying what amount to punitive damages to the United States is essentially a tacit agreement that our stumpage fees (set by the crown) amount to a subsidy, an inference that I find loathesome; third the agreement as set out appears to leave the US with a number of escape hatches - which suggests that the agreement doesn't actually commit them to anything.

As pointed out here, the previous government's strategy of spending millions on litigation (and winning time after time), was still a lot less than handing over a billion to the US.