Nova Scotia is doubling down on claims that it is weakening Canada’s negotiating position in the decades‑long softwood lumber dispute with the United States, with the province requesting that the U.S. Department of Commerce dismiss a request from Quebec, Alberta and Ontario for deeper scrutiny of how it sets its timber‑harvesting fees.
That is according to a new report in the Globe and Mail, which reports that Nova Scotia wrote to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week, arguing that the provinces were engaged in a “fishing expedition” intended to “cast aspersions.”
The disagreement centres on Nova Scotia’s reliance on private surveys of owners to establish its stumpage rates. The province says it should not be faulted if those surveys produce higher fees than in other parts of Canada — a long‑standing point of comparison in U.S. countervailing duty calculations. Unlike otherprovinces, Nova Scotia’s forest base is predominantly private, with 70 per cent of timberland in private hands. That distinction means it is mostly exempt from the U.S. softwood duties that apply to the Crown‑dominated jurisdictions in the rest of the country.
“The government of Nova Scotia categorically rejects the provincial government’s insinuation that the government of Nova Scotia is trying to intentionally disadvantage the Canadian softwood lumber industry,” the province’s lawyers wrote. “The provincial governments, among other accusations, insinuate that the government of Nova Scotia had nefarious motives.”
For years, the U.S. Commerce Department has used Nova Scotia’s stumpage data as a benchmark when evaluating whether other provinces charge below‑market rates for logging rights. Quebec, Alberta and Ontario now want Washington to probe how Nova Scotia “crunches its proprietary numbers,” and have even suggested that the U.S. consider abandoning those private surveys altogether.
Nova Scotia insists it has already provided ample information for the U.S. to understand its system. “What the government of Nova Scotia has publicly disclosed is more than sufficient to allow interested parties to understand submissions, without significantly undermining the ability to conduct private stumpage surveys and set Crown stumpage rates in Nova Scotia,” the lawyers said. They added that the province participates in U.S. proceedings because “doing so is respectful to an important trading partner in the United States.”
The dispute comes at a time when U.S. duties on Canadian softwood lumber are among their highest in years. Most Canadian producers now face combined anti‑dumping and countervailing duties of 35.16 per cent, plus a further 10 per cent tariff imposed last fall under Section 232 national‑security provisions, forcing producers to look beyond their southern border for new markets.
As it is, British Columbia remains the largest exporter to the U.S. market, shipping 271.9 million FBM in December 2023, followed by Quebec at 145.0 million FBM, Alberta at 127.4 million FBM, Ontario at 112.3 million FBM, and the Maritime provinces collectively at 96.3 million FBM. Nova Scotia represents only a small share of that Maritime total, underscoring its minor role in U.S bound softwood shipments.
With the 2006 Canada‑U.S. softwood agreement having expired in 2015 — and no replacement in sight — the U.S. Lumber Coalition continues to argue that “Canadian industrial policy promotes domestic production, and therefore exports, by charging below‑market prices for standing timber on Crown land.”
In response, Ottawa has launched the Canadian Forest Sector Transformation Task Force to reduce reliance on U.S. buyers and expand domestic use of Canadian wood products, including mass timber and modular construction.
