Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Good morning to you and your fellow members of the Standing Committee on International Trade, members of Parliament, and, of course, my fellow presenters. I thank them for their comments this morning as well.

I'm Lana Payne. I'm the national president of Unifor.

We are Canada's largest private sector union, with more than 320,000 members across the country working in every major sector of the Canadian economy, including the forestry industry. Our 22,000 forestry sector members are spread across 10 Canadian provinces working in a variety of forestry and logging occupations, as well as wood product and pulp and paper-manufacturing facilities.

Quebec has the highest concentration of forestry membership in our union, accounting for about 55% of our overall sectoral membership, while Ontario and British Columbia account for 22% and 14% respectively. Of course, we have very important mills and operations in Atlantic Canada and the Prairies.

I'd like to remind the committee that, while the softwood lumber dispute poses a clear and present danger, Canada's forest sector continues to experience a perfect storm of repeated and intersecting crises. A combination of economic, environmental and global challenges continues to destabilize the broader forestry sector.

Forest fires were less destructive this year but still very bad. Important conservation efforts continue to complicate long-term planning for the sector. Volatile and flat prices are still making companies rethink their investments, and new EU regulations could negatively impact the ability of Canadian forest products to be sold in that market and around the world. All these crises have been disastrous for forestry workers, their families and their communities.

The recent doubling of combined tariff duty rates and the looming threat of further incoming increases are a devastating blow to Canada's forestry sector. We fear that we will see workplace closures as a result of these continued increases. This is without contemplating the additional 25% across-the-board tariff threatened by President-elect Trump, which, if imposed, would cause major problems in the sector. I think we all know this.

Forest sector stakeholders in Canada have not always formed a united front on this issue. This is particularly true of some of the forest companies themselves. For example, we are deeply concerned to see some Canadian forest companies divert investments into their U.S. operations while pulling up stakes here in Canada and abandoning their Canadian operations. However, it's important to recognize that playing the blame game won't help forestry workers and their families or the hundreds of communities across our country that rely on forestry for their survival.

The fundamental challenge we face is the overwhelming imbalance of power in our trade relationship with the United States. No amount of finger-pointing or blame shifting here in Canada will change the fact that the U.S. controls all the chips in this dispute at the moment, but certainly not all hope is lost. I agree with Derek on this.

Despite the increase in output by U.S. softwood producers, U.S. lumber companies still don't have enough capacity to meet all of that country's lumber needs. The U.S. homebuilding industry, as you've heard, still needs Canadian softwood, and these punishing tariffs are driving up construction costs and making home ownership less affordable for working Americans. We have allies in our fight, and we have reasonable arguments to be made in our favour.

It is critical that our elected leaders, governments across the country, forest workers and their unions, and other forestry stakeholders come together and focus on finding solutions to this unfortunate and unnecessary dispute.

I would like to close my comments on a note of hope and optimism, which are in short supply these days in the forestry sector discussions. The softwood lumber dispute drives home the simple fact that Canada's forestry sector is overreliant on first-order raw resource extraction. We have an incredible opportunity to promote, support and invest in higher-level production, where we can create value-added forest products and systems right here in Canada. Innovative products and systems like engineered wood products, mass timber frame construction, modular components and biofuels represent an incredible opportunity to grow the sector, create new forestry jobs and increase economic development and productivity. What we need is a coordinated, comprehensive and inclusive industrial strategy to help transform our forestry sector—an ambitious and bold redevelopment strategy, if you will.

This will require a whole-sector, team approach involving governments at all levels, forest companies, industry groups, indigenous communities, academics and experts, forestry schools and, of course, forestry workers, their unions and their local communities. This transformation will not only mean better jobs, more sustainable forests and more responsible economic development. It will also better insulate us from the ongoing threat of continued softwood tariffs.

Thank you very much. I welcome all of your questions.

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