The Pan-Canadian Alliance represents small and medium-sized Canadian-owned wood manufacturers that the softwood lumber trade dispute has unfairly impacted. We come together across Canada to highlight the inequity affecting our industry and to advocate for our interests in negotiating a new Canada-U.S. agreement. Our businesses are entirely Canadian-owned, employ local workers, and reinvest in our communities.

This trade dispute shouldn't define us; however, since the expiration of the last softwood lumber agreement in 2015, our wood products have been subject to US softwood lumber duty. In the previous softwood lumber agreement, our companies only paid the duty on the input raw materials, which is known as the "First Mill” rate. Now our wood products are subject to the full ad valorem duty on the total value of the final product. When we sell our products and add value through secondary manufacturing, we pay the whole duty on the final selling price, which includes manufacturing costs, trim loss, and profit. The final price of our products is significantly higher than that of our US and International competitors, which reduces our market competitiveness. Our products continue to lose market share not only to competing wood products but to substitute products made from materials that impact our climate, such as plastics, concrete and steel.

We should not face export taxes or quotas. Our raw materials are not subsidized, and we are too small to “dump” our products in the US market. We acquire logs and lumber at “arm’s length” from various suppliers on the open market, just like members of the US Lumber Coalition do. As a smaller, value-added wood manufacturer with limited inventory, we cannot afford to sell below US market prices. However, we find ourselves entangled in this unfair trade dispute: our sole wrongdoing is hiring more Canadians to create higher-value, non-commodity wood products from every tree harvested.