Envoy: Softwood deal has enough support

OTTAWA – Canada’s federal government is optimistic it has harvested enough support from Canada’s forest industry to implement a contentious softwood-lumber agreement with the United States, Canada’s top envoy to Washington said Monday.

“The government is confident that it will receive quite substantial support from the industry to move ahead,” Michael Wilson, Canada’s U.S. ambassador, told a Commons committee on the final day before an Ottawa-imposed deadline.

The federal government had set Monday as the deadline for Canada’s lumber producers to endorse the deal, which has faced heavy criticism in some circles even though it is backed by forest giants such as Canfor Corp. and producing provinces such as British Columbia and Ontario.

Ottawa has not yet formally announced whether it has enough support to go ahead with the deal but is expected to outline its final position today after the deadline expires.

The lumber agreement would end years of legal and trade wrangling between Canada and the United States and open up the U.S. market to so-called managed trade in softwood, a key Canadian export sector that accounts for a third of the U.S. market and creates tens of thousands of jobs.