Four months after it went into effect, officials say it's too early to hang a "Mission Accomplished" sign over the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber agreement.
The seven-year renewable deal that ended the latest round of a decades-old trade war still has teething problems, including squabbles over export quotas, technical glitches and tax disputes.
But government and forest industry officials say they're striving to make the managed-trade agreement work.
"There's always stuff at the detail level when you get into an agreement like this," says International Trade Minister David Emerson.
"It's going to require a bit of grinding but I don't see anything that is terribly out of whack at this stage."
B.C. Forests Minister Rich Coleman, whose province accounts for about 55 per cent of exports into the U.S. market, can't yet call the agreement a complete success, but "the feedback I'm getting is that it is working.
"There seems to be a fairly comfortable feeling - from British Columbia's perspective anyway - that we're playing pretty reasonable with the Americans and they're playing pretty reasonable with us."
But some critics believe its flaws are such that the deal won't survive past the two-year minimum period allowed before either country can terminate it.
One expert who didn't want to be named says exporters may find they can't live with its quota restrictions or onerous border tax aimed at limiting Canadian lumber's share of the U.S. market when low prices make American mills less competitive.
Companies are trying to adapt to the new managed-trade climate but privately doubt the agreement will survive and are afraid to speak out, he says.
Those who think the agreement is just another truce in a trade conflict with roots two centuries deep have recent history on their side.
A 1986 border-tax deal fell apart by the early 1990s. The five-year agreement that put quotas on Canadian lumber exports expired in acrimony in 2001, followed almost immediately by a trade complaint from U.S. lumber interests that led to 27-per-cent duties.
The new agreement's supporters say it's different this time because new committees of Canadian and U.S. industry and government officials will head off disputes before they escalate.
"The mechanisms are there so it's up to the parties to make them work," says John Allan, head of the B.C. Lumber Trade Council and B.C. Council of Forest Industries.
Canadian and U.S. government representatives will sit down in Washington this week for the first meeting of the top binational committee.
Canadian officials say they're confident they can demonstrate to the Americans the programs don't subsidize lumber exports.
In turn, they want assurances the Americans will keep their promise to accept B.C. government timber pricing reforms aimed at removing the main U.S. complaint that logs from Crown lands are subsidized.
The agreement ended six years of ruinous trade litigation over American allegations Canada's one-third share of the U.S. lumber market came thanks to underpriced Crown timber.
It replaced punitive U.S. import duties in place since May 2002 with an escalating Canadian export tax for lumber from British Columbia and Alberta when it falls below certain price benchmarks.
