U.S. lumber group critical of B.C. cut to coastal stumpage fees

A large clamp machine moves logs around the Pope and Talbot sawmill in Grand Forks, B.C., on Nov. 6, 2007. (Jeff Bassett/The Canadian Press)

A U.S. lumber group on Thursday criticized a move by British Columbia to lower stumpage fees for cutting timber on Crown land on the province's coast.

Steve Swanson, chairman of the U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, said the stumpage fee reduction "appears to be a clear violation of the Softwood Lumber Agreement."

The coalition said the fee reduction "appears to fly in the face" of Canada's commitments to the United States in the agreement not to provide lower prices for cutting government-owned standing timber.

Premier Gordon Campbell said Wednesday at the annual Truck Loggers Association convention in Vancouver that the average harvesting fee for coastal lumber will be less than $5 per cubic metre, down from $18.56 per cubic metre one year ago, effective Thursday.

The stumpage fee is a sore point for U.S. producers, who have argued they are so low they constitute a subsidy for Canadian producers.

Campbell said Wednesday the fee reduction would not constitute a violation of the 2006 softwood agreement. He said the province started linking stumpage fees to market prices in 2006 over U.S. pressure.

"[U.S. producers] should like that," Campbell said. "We brought in place the market-pricing system because they were concerned we needed a market-pricing system. That's exactly what we're doing."

Most of the lumber cut in B.C. comes from sources in the interior of the province, not the coastal region. No change for interior lumber stumpage fees was announced.

Although the province is cutting stumpage fees, some producers don't think it will mean a big jump in the amount of timber cut in B.C., due to weak demand in the United States.

With files from the Canadian Press