I believe that's the correct term for it.
Hornswoggled. An unusual word like discombobulate or skeedaddle with murky origins from the early to mid-19th century American frontier.
Hornswoggled.
trick somebody: to cheat, trick, or deceive somebody ( informal )
That's exactly what has happened to Canadian lumber producers and, yes, the Canadian public. We've been hornswoggled.
Never mind all the rhetoric around the Softwood Lumber Agreement. The bottom line is that everything the Canadian lumber industry said and knew was absolutely correct. The NAFTA and WTO panels knew this to be true. I would say that even Mr. Emerson knew this to be true. Canadian lumber is not subsidized, the duties imposed by the United States were 100% illegal and any harm that occurred to US lumber producers were due to market forces not any actions by Canadian lumber producers nor Canadian laws governing lumber production.
It's now official. I'll show you over the flip.
Cross posted at The Next Agenda.
I don't know how I missed
this story over the weekend. It appeared in the Business pages of this past Saturday's Vancouver Sun (October 14, 2006). I didn't see it until Monday evening. To date (now Thursday, October 19th) it's the only media source I can find. It should be on the front page of every Canadian newspaper.
Court orders U.S. to repay all $5.3 billion in softwood duties
A U.S. court on Friday ordered the Bush administration to pay back all of the $5.3 billion US in duties collected from Canadian lumber companies, one day after Ottawa voluntarily implemented a negotiated agreement that leaves $1 billion of that money in the hands of the Americans.
The belated legal victory in the softwood dispute provides "absolute vindication" that the U.S. duties were illegal and that Canadian lumber is not subsidized, opponents of the negotiated settlement said.
The U.S. Court of International Trade ordered the refund after having already found the duties were illegal.
Got that. The people who robbed us aren't entitled to a single penny of $1 billion that we just handed over. And unfortunately it doesn't change a thing.
Congrats Mr. Emerson. Once again Canada snatches 'defeat from the jaws of victory' as Federal NDP trade critic Peter Julian said.
You have to think that both the US and Canadian governments knew this decision was about to come down. There's the reason for the hasty signing and implementation of this deal. What I don't get is what's in it for Baby Dub and his crew beyond showing Big Dub what good boys they are for going along with this economic massacre?
And it actually gets worse. About the $1 billion handed over?
Gray said it sounds as if the endowment will be using Canadian money for the kind of projects that the softwood agreement defines as subsidies in this country and prevents Canadian governments from sponsoring.
A further $150 million US goes to the American Forest Foundation, which encourages stewardship on private forest lands. And $100 million goes to Habitat for Humanities International to buy softwood lumber for homes for low-income families in timber-reliant communities or who are recovering from disasters.
And $50 million US goes to a yet-to-be named Canada-U.S. forest industry council. The rest -- $500 million US -- goes to members of the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports.
"What we have done is rejuvenated the coalition, given them half-a-billion dollars for when we have to fight the next round," said Cameron.
And not only that, we've also handed over, under the terms of the SLA, complete control of the Canadian industry to the US industry. Provinces can not make legislative changes relating to their own lumber industries without approval of the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports. We've given a US industry lobby veto power over our own domestic laws! Way to stand up to Canada `stand up for Canada' guys.
Remember David Gray?. He's a small lumber firm owner and western spokesman for Canada's Free Trade Lumber Council. He's the guy who, a couple months back, said, "The reality of the thing is going to come home to roost in six to eight months and that's about when they're going to want to try and get re-elected."
Looks like it's already come home to roost.
So where's our media on this? Except for that Vancouver Sun piece, missing in action.
With one exception. An opinion piece in Tuesday's (October 17th) Globe & Mail. It's written by Gordon Gibson, or more correctly Gordon Gibson Jr. He's a former BC politician and comes from a lumber industry background. His dad, Gordon Sr., was BC's notorious and legendary `Bull of the Woods'.
Gibson was a millionaire timber baron whose nickname was "Bull of the Woods".
He was dismissed at a rough, hard-drinking logger who had made it rich, but was loved by many small loggers as being one of the only people to be interested in them over the interests of big business.
In the 1920s, he and his brothers ran the Gibson Lumber and Shingle Company.
His son, Gordon Gibson, Jr. led the provincial Liberals in the 1970s.
Gordon Jr. may be slightly right of centre and has Fraser Institute ties, but he knows his stuff when it comes to lumber.
(I've had some trouble linking this op-ed piece. I'll try this one, and if that doesn't work for you can attempt to retrieve from a Google news search here. It's well worth the read.
Some choice excerpts:
Eat a lot of crow, convince us we should walk away from a billion dollars, or face a dangerous election issue? These are the unattractive choices facing the Harper government after a huge lumber industry victory in the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) last Friday.
The vague public impression is that we had to do what amounts to a bad deal because the Yankee bully had us on the ropes and would simply keep changing the rules until we capitulated. That is what our government would like us to believe -- but it is not true.
The true story is one of duplicity on both sides of the border. The Americans, naturally, were conspiring against our industry. But in a weird twist, our government has been helping them. To understand this requires looking at two tracks.
The inexperienced Harper administration seized the chance to brag that in only a couple of months it had been able to fix an issue the Libs couldn't solve for five years. And it would validate Emerson's sleazy jump to the Tories. As a result, they bought a deal so loaded in favour of the Americans it was arguably worse than the one the Martin government had turned down earlier.
Export taxes were to be imposed even higher than the old tariffs, and this has now been done. We were to be capped at 30 per cent of the U.S. market when the Liberals had negotiated 34 per cent. Sawmills are now closing in Eastern Canada, jobs lost in the thousands. There will be lots more.
The U.S. protectionist lobby is to be handed $500-million of our money to pay their lawyers and refill their coffers to attack us again. We will pay for our own thrashing, in a fight we would have won had our government had the guts to stand up to the Americans.
Continuing the political track, industry holdouts remained -- so many that in desperation last week the two governments jointly appealed to the U.S. court to dissolve everything on the basis it had never happened. We stipulated the U.S. had never done anything illegal, destroying five years' worth of legal victories and our shield against future harassment. And yet, immediately thereafter came the "return the money" order from the CIT.
So now we have those ongoing duties and a gutted NAFTA, plus supervision of much of our forest law by Washington. Kind of makes you proud to be an allegedly sovereign Canadian, doesn't it?
But, I'm an optimist and willing to look at a couple of silver linings. The first is that apparently the NAFTA dispute resolution process actually does work. We now have a precedent there. And secondly we have the US court precedent should the issue rear its ugly head once more.
Most importantly, although no law had to be enacted on the US side in order for the hornswoogle trade deal to go through it has to be made law by an Act of Parliament in Canada. To date the SLA has only passed first reading. Second reading is a rubber stamp. But, this can still be defeated or amended by (a Liberal Party dominated) Senate. The Senate rarely if ever does this, but as Gibson Jr. points out:
The tax legislation required to implement the Sellout Agreement requires consent of the Liberal-dominated Senate. That body should hold the necessary hearings to reveal the whole rotten story. A Senate defeat of the agreement would force an election on the issue. Good idea. Forestry and sovereign self-respect are so basic it would be a fitting topic.
I'm `pig biting mad' and all Canadians should be as well, including our media. Where are they on this?
I started out with an early to mid-19th century American frontier term to describe this betrayal by `Canada's New Government'. I may as well end with something that is even older than the early to mid-19th century American frontier.
Far be it for me to advocate vigilante or mob justice but it seemed appropriate whenever a flim-flam man would be found out and caught in his confidence game by the good citizens of the frontier burgh. It's appropriate for Mr. Emerson especially. It involves tar, feather and something about being ridden out of town on rail. I'll get my bucket ready. I'm told Mr. Emerson looks sharp in black.