{"id":648498,"date":"2026-05-05T03:14:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T03:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/648498\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T03:14:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T03:14:16","slug":"b-c-premier-cant-understand-why-softwood-lumber-is-not-on-tariff-relief-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/648498\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. premier can\u2019t understand \u2018why\u2019 softwood lumber is not on tariff relief list"},"content":{"rendered":"

B.C. Premier David Eby says he is frustrated that help for the province\u2019s softwood lumber<\/a> industry was not included in the federal government\u2019s $1.5-billion relief package for tariff-hit industries.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On Monday, the\u00a0federal government rolled out a series<\/a> of fresh relief measures worth $1.5 billion for Canada\u2019s tariff-hit steel, aluminum and copper tariffs<\/a>, ministers\u00a0Melanie Joly<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Evan Solomon<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

The U.S. currently imposes a 50 per cent tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum, along with a 50 per cent tariff on certain copper products from Canada.<\/p>\n

Eby told reporters on Monday that he tried to find the information on softwood lumber, but discovered it was once again left off the list as a tariff-affected industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what it\u2019s going to take really to get the bureaucrats and the ministers in Ottawa to recognize that softwood lumber employs more people in Canada than steel and auto parts combined,\u201d Eby added.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a massive industry. In British Columbia, it is being decimated by completely unfair tariffs out of the United States, which includes tariffs on value-added products.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Get<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGet breaking National news<\/p>\n

Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won’t miss a trending story.<\/p>\n

Eby said in November<\/a> that he was confident that\u00a0the federal government understands the importance of the logging industry to communities both large and small across the province.<\/p>\n

He said on Monday that he is going to continue to push to raise the federal government\u2019s awareness around softwood lumber and its crucial role in Canada\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sincere hope is that softwood is so important that they\u2019re preparing a fully separate, comprehensively funded announcement, but my sneaking suspicion is that yet again a core industry for Canadians has been left off the list and I struggle to understand why,\u201d Eby added.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Click<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t3:30
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBC scraps plan for anti-tariff ads that angered Trump, aligns with Ottawa on softwood strategy\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMore on Politics
\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n

Joly said that because the tariffs are different and they affect industries differently, the relief packages also have to be different.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

But Eby said he still struggles to understand why softwood gets treated so differently from those other industries.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been the case that the softwood tariffs have been around for a long time and the industry has struggled with the Americans on this for many decades now, and there may be a sense of complacency about that as a result in Ottawa,\u201d Eby said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have worse access right now to the U.S. market than Europe, than Russia. And as a result, those two markets are sending more wood into the United States than Canada is right now. It makes absolutely no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eby said he wants to see the federal government priortize discussions of softwood lumber in the trade negotiations and to recognize how much of an impact the tariffs are having.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"B.C. Premier David Eby says he is frustrated that help for the province\u2019s softwood lumber industry was not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[241115,45,49,48,46,714,2664],"class_list":["post-648498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bc-softwood-lumber","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-politics","tag-softwood-lumber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}