U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra said his meeting with B.C. Premier David Eby was 'very friendly' despite numerous trade irritants.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, emerged from a 45-minute meeting with B.C. Premier David Eby smiling on Tuesday but said any progress on trade talks will be up to the two countries’ leaders to announce.
“The President and the Prime Minister talked on Sunday. They may talk again this week,” he told reporters outside the Premier’s legislature office. “I think any update should come from the Prime Minister or the President.”
He said the meeting was “very friendly” despite numerous trade irritants, from U.S. tariffs to Canada’s retaliatory measures.
Mr. Eby said in a statement following the meeting that they had a “frank” discussion about the contentious and long-running trade dispute between the two countries over softwood lumber duties.
“While Ambassador Hoekstra and I did not agree on everything, we both expressed our hopes for a positive outcome to trade negotiations between our two countries,” he said.
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The U.S. levies countervailing duties for what it sees as subsidized Canadian lumber and charges anti-dumping duties because it claims Canadian producers sell softwood below market value.
U.S. import taxes on softwood lumber currently total 45.16 per cent on most Canadian producers, including countervailing and anti-dumping duties of 35.16 per cent and tariffs of 10 per cent.
The accumulated U.S. duties paid by Canadian softwood producers since 2017 alone have reached roughly US$7.7-billion.
Most forests in Canada are on Crown land, where buyers pay “stumpage fees” to provincial governments for the right to log. For decades, the U.S. has alleged that those fees are too low, and that they amount to unfair provincial subsidies.
The two men also discussed the looming talks on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and B.C.’s ban on U.S. liquor. Ahead of the meeting, Mr. Eby said he hoped for progress despite the friction.
“My hope is that we’re able to move some direction in that way, but it’s hard to do when we’re talking with people who are losing their jobs here because of totally unfair duties on our softwood lumber,” he told reporters.
“And when an American President is issuing tweets that cover the entirety of Canada with an American flag. So, hopefully, we’re able to make some progress on this, but I’m sure that both of us recognize some of the challenges in our relationship.”
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The American ambassador to Canada has demonstrated a fiery approach to defending his country’s interests since taking up the post last spring.
In remarks at a Canadian-American economic conference in July, he complained that Canadians were “mean and nasty” for refusing to travel to the U.S. and for removing U.S. alcohol products from store shelves.
(Mr. Eby has encouraged Canadians not to travel to the U.S. for leisure and has pulled U.S. products from government liquor stores.)
In November, Mr. Hoekstra delivered an expletive-filled dressing-down to Ontario’s representative in Washington during a prestigious event in Ottawa over an ad paid for by the Ontario government that featured pro-free-trade remarks by then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan.
More recently, the ambassador asked The Globe and Mail to apologize for a column that he said mocked the “intelligence, education and character” of the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team players who attended the State of the Union address in February.
But on Tuesday, Mr. Hoekstra said his meeting with the B.C. Premier was positive.
“We covered lots of topics, and we’re both smiling,” he said. Asked if he still thinks Canadians are mean and nasty, he replied: " My view is I probably shouldn’t talk about it."