B.C. Forests Critic Stamer Takes Softwood Lumber Concerns Directly to U.S. Diplomats

B.C. Forests Critic Takes Lumber Tariff Case Directly to U.S. Diplomats

When Ward Stamer, the B.C. Conservative MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson and the Opposition’s Forests Critic, sat down with senior U.S. diplomatic officials on July 4, the meeting carried weight that went well beyond a courtesy call.

Stamer and several other B.C. Opposition MLAs met directly with U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra and U.S. Consul General for Vancouver Shawn Crowley. The agenda covered softwood lumber concerns, trade tariffs, border security, and cross-border manufacturing policy — a compressed but pointed agenda that reflects just how much is at stake for British Columbia’s forest sector in the current trade environment.

“It was a very positive meeting,” Stamer told reporters after the session.

What Was on the Table

The softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the United States is not a new problem. It has persisted in various forms for decades, cycling through countervailing duties, anti-dumping levies, and successive rounds of trade litigation. But the current moment is particularly fraught. The Trump administration’s broad use of tariffs as a trade policy instrument has injected new uncertainty into an already fragile cross-border lumber relationship, and British Columbia’s forest communities — already weathering mill closures, rising operating costs, and softening demand — are watching developments closely.

Stamer’s July 4 meeting inserted an opposition voice into that diplomatic conversation. While the B.C. government negotiates trade matters at the provincial and federal level, the fact that senior U.S. envoys were willing to sit down with Opposition MLAs signals that American diplomats are actively canvassing a range of B.C. voices on trade, not just those in government.

The meeting covered border security alongside trade — a pairing that reflects the Trump administration’s tendency to link economic and security concerns in its dealings with Canada. For B.C. lumber producers, any tightening of border procedures adds friction and cost to supply chains already strained by tariff-driven pricing uncertainty.

Stamer’s Manufacturing Argument

The most substantive element of Stamer’s public comments concerned the framing he brought to the table with Hoekstra and Crowley. Rather than simply opposing tariffs, Stamer appears to have argued that integrated BC-U.S. manufacturing supply chains serve the Trump administration’s own stated goal of expanding American manufacturing.

Stamer used a concrete example: raw logs processed into veneer in Kamloops, with that veneer then shipped to the United States for use in cabinet manufacturing. In his telling, this is not a story of Canadian exports undercutting American workers — it is a story of Canadian primary processing feeding American secondary manufacturing.

“The president can say things that might sort of seem kind of contradictory to what we’re talking about, but at the end of the day the president is trying to have more manufacturing in his country, and that is why he’s pushing so hard in making some of these deals,” Stamer said.

The argument is strategically deft. By accepting the premise that the U.S. administration wants more domestic manufacturing, Stamer repositions BC value-added wood products as an enabler of that goal rather than a competitor to it. The veneer-to-cabinets pipeline is a specific, tangible example of exactly that kind of interdependency — one that creates American manufacturing jobs downstream from Canadian forest sector activity.

What It Signals for the Industry

For BC forest industry operators, the Stamer meetings carry a few distinct signals worth tracking.

First, there is now at least one direct line of communication between B.C. political voices specifically focused on forests and the most senior U.S. diplomatic representatives in Canada. That is not nothing. Whether or not Stamer’s arguments land in Washington’s trade policy machinery, the willingness of Ambassador Hoekstra and Consul General Crowley to engage substantively suggests the U.S. side is still in listening mode.

Second, the value-added framing Stamer is advancing aligns with a strategy that some industry groups have been quietly promoting for years: lean into primary processing in Canada, secondary manufacturing in the U.S., and use that integrated model as a political argument against blanket tariffs on Canadian lumber. The Kamloops veneer example is precisely the kind of case study that makes that argument concrete and local.

Third, the involvement of multiple B.C. Opposition MLAs broadens the coalition of voices bringing these concerns to American diplomats. The softwood lumber file has historically been managed at the federal and provincial government level, but the July 4 meetings show that MLA-level advocacy is now part of the mix.

For producers, exporters, and operators watching the US-Canada softwood lumber file, the key question remains whether diplomatic engagement at any level will translate into policy movement in Washington. The current tariff structure has not shifted substantially despite years of negotiation. Stamer’s meetings are unlikely to break that logjam on their own — but they are a data point indicating that B.C.’s forest sector continues to push its case through every available channel.