The British Columbia government is on the warpath with the federal government. First, it was the Alberta-proposed pipeline to BC’s northern coast that riled Premier David Eby and got him to confront his Alberta counterpart, Danielle Smith. Then again, the US-imposed additional 10% tariffs on Canada’s softwood lumber exports to that country got the Premier to complain about Ottawa’s stepmotherly treatment of the province.
On Wednesday, October 15, Sher-E-Punjab host Mani Sharma asked BC Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar if the provincial government is moving “inch by inch on a confrontational path with the federal government.” Parmar replied that “it’s a fair assessment”. It was confirmation of what Canadians have been fearing for a while: that while the ominous clouds of Trumpian tariffs loom large over Canadian skies, Team Canada, as former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named it, is a divided house, seemingly unprepared to weather the storm.
Sharp exchanges of words among Canadian premiers aren’t new. Past Alberta and BC premiers have duelled over several issues and Eby and Smith are no exceptions. But the recent exchanges have been rather acrimonious. On the pipeline issue, Eby had warned both the Albertan and federal governments not to test his patience and not to mistake his politeness for weakness. But his dogged refusal to allow the pipeline to BC or consider the lifting, however partial, of the tanker ban, got Danielle Smith to remark that his opposition was “un-Canadian and unconstitutional.”
A recent Angus Reid survey found that 56% of British Columbians are in favour of the pipeline—a finding that weakens the Premier’s stand—but the BC government is maintaining an ‘elbows-up’ approach on the pipeline issue, citing objections by First Nations and indigenous communities.
Some of this opposition was anticipated. As The Hub points out in a recent article that while the federal government’s Bill C-5 was rammed through in Parliament, indigenous and environment groups sensed this as a backdoor entry for fossil-fuel companies. While BC has been betting big on Mark Carney’s big infra push, the pipeline issue has proved to be a stumbling block. So far, the federal government has been a mute spectator to the BC-Alberta standoff despite being a party to this, but for how long cannot be said with certainty.
On the softwood lumber issue, things are at a critical stage—almost at breaking point, as industry insiders are saying. It goes without saying that 45% tariffs pose a significant threat to BC’s forestry industry. The Premier has acknowledged it and called it an “existential threat”, as CTV News reported. But both the Premier and the forest minister have asked Ottawa to quickly release the promised funding of $1.2 billion that the Prime Minister had announced over the summer. “We needed that amount a couple of weeks ago when we got to know that additional 10% tariffs were coming,” Parmar said on the Mani Sharma Show, which is available below.
The forest minister reiterated the Premier’s point about Ottawa heeding Ontario and Quebec’s needs first and BC’s later. “When auto-parts makers … when steelworkers in Ontario, when their jobs are threatened, it’s treated as an emergency, and rightly so… What we’re asking for today is that that same respect, that same concern, that same sense of emergency is shared for the forest sector in this country,” CBC quoted Eby in a recent article.
On Sharma’s question if Ontario and Quebec get more priority because of having more seats in the House of Commons than BC, Parmar reasoned that it could be because Ottawa is in Ontario and Quebec is “down the road”, or “it could be that we are nicer out here in BC and don’t complain as much, but it’s frustrating…”
Both Parmar and the Premier pointed out the “absurdity” of these tariffs by pointing out that Russian lumber has lower tariffs than Canadian lumber, which not only puts Canadians and Americans at a disadvantage but benefits Russians.