B.C.’s minister of forests said that Canada’s relationship with the United States has changed forever.
Speaking to Reuters on Wednesday, Ravi Parmar said that, “If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from the threat of President Trump’s tariffs is our relationship with the United States has changed forever.”
“Not just on lumber, but on all goods and services.”
Parmar said B.C. is on edge about what is going to happen as they don’t know what is going to come next.
“And for the forest sector in particular, we face many challenges,” he said.
“We have faced wildfires. We’ve faced the end of the beetle kill, pine beetle epidemic, and we’ve also taken a number of steps to conserve our forests as well through new conservation measures to protect the biodiversity and the ecosystem as well.”
In early March, Trump said Canada will face new tariffs on dairy and lumber that match the ones he said Canada puts on those products, and expected them to begin by March 11.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later clarified in media interviews that Trump was referring to the April 2 “reciprocal” tariffs, which will include dairy and lumber.
Parmar recently visited California, and told Reuters that when speaking with the California Building Industry Association he learned there’s an overwhelming need for Canadian lumber to rebuild homes in the aftermath of the wildfires that occurred in Los Angeles earlier this year.
“The president ran on this campaign of building more housing,” Parmar said.
“This tariff, this tax, is really a tax on middle-class Americans. Middle-class Americans who just want to build homes in their communities, and middle-class Americans who, at a time in their dealing with wildfires, floods and hurricanes, are going to have to pay more, in some cases 20 to 30 to 40 per cent more just to build their home or rebuild their home.”
Parmar added that B.C. still relies heavily on the lumber industry with revenue from the forest sector to pay for schools, health care and social services.
“So when British Columbia’s forest sector thrives, British Columbia thrives.”
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