Canadian trade minister Pierre Pettigrew held out hope for a resolution to the softwood lumber dispute last week when he said it could end by mid-December.
His view echoed that of the US timber envoy who had earlier said he thought a deal was possible by Christmas.
Meanwhile, Abitibi-Consolidated Inc of Montreal is to shed 5,000 jobs at 18 sawmills in Québec and British Columbia from the end of November to mid-January.
The workers will join a long list of forest workers – 25,000 so far – to have been laid off in the wake of tariffs levied by the US on Canadian lumber as a result of the lapsing of the Softwood Lumber Agreement.
President of the Coast Forest and Lumber Association Brian Zak said: ‘We’ve got 12,500 people that are sitting at home and we can’t tell them when they’re going back to work. We can’t tell people they’ll be back before Christmas or whether it is going to be a long time afterwards.’
The US Commerce Department slapped a 19.3% interim tariff on Canadian softwood in August, claiming that the Canadian industry had a price advantage because it is subsidised through low logging fees charged by the provinces.
