No done deal

The Cons may be doing their best to claim that the softwood lumber capitulation is over and done with. But the reality is something else entirely, as over 20% of the industry still hasn't been forced into signing on and the small matter of Canada's successful litigation still hasn't been resolved:

(T)he U.S. stipulation that all lumber-related trade cases be withdrawn was impossible to finesse, said Mr. Gray.

"The last I heard, it was 86 companies out of the 400 or so had not signed," he said. "I think that's their single most important issue.

"Our rights are our rights in American courts and I don't know how they can take that away from us."

Of course, it's hard to know how the Cons can manage to live in an alternate reality either. Yet here's their take on how the deal came about in the first place:

Mr. Emerson was unavailable but said in a news release the extension came after close consultation and in direct response to a request from the industry.

"The Softwood Lumber Agreement was negotiated in close co-operation with our softwood lumber industry and the provinces," he said.

Needless to say, the supposed "close co-operation" in fact consisted primarily of keeping Canada's interests away from the bargaining table, then imposing a terrible deal based on a claim that it's too late to do any better. And all indications are now that the Cons are only looking for ways to "co-operate" just a bit more with the current holdouts - both by playing down yet another impending decision which could boost Canada's position, and by looking for new and creative ways to suppress the rights of the producers who haven't yet given in.

The good news, though, is that there are still plenty of producers still fighting to defend the Canadian interests that the Cons want to sell out. And now that the Cons' claims to near-unanimity (not to mention their threats to the holdouts) have been shown to be as empty as the rest of their public statements on the file, there's no reason at all for those producers to give up now.