Logging a majestic stand of hemlock and balsam in British Columbia's coastal rainforest costs logging companies $100 a cubic metre. Selling the hemlock gets them an average of $60 a cubic metre, the balsam gets them less. "We lose $40 on every cubic metre of hemlock that we bring to the sawmill," explains Steve Crombie of Interfor, one of B.C.'s large product exporters.  read more »

How dumb does Prime Minister Jean Chrétien think President George W. Bush can be? Very, very dumb, judging by the arguments over softwood lumber that our Cabinet ministers and trade officials had been floating prior to Mr. Chrétien's meeting with Mr. Bush yesterday. Only someone as thick as a plank could buy the lulus put out by our government leaders in what -- at over $10-billion per year -- is by far the most important trade dispute between the two countries.  read more »

An interview, for CBC Radio's Ideas program, with Lawrence Solomon about the ways in which competition, privatization, property rights, and other market mechanisms can work to preserve the environment.  read more »

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, there has been a lot of good news on the environment.  The deserts of the Sahel may not be spreading after all.  And Lake Erie is no longer dead; its waters now team with tens of millions of walleye.  But the best environmental news of all is the opening of the Berlin Wall and the democratization of Latin America.  read more »

Question: In the one year since the free trade agreement took effect, has the deal done anything to harm - or help - the Canadian environment?  read more »

Robert Rivard of the Canadian Lumbermen’s Association would like to go back to “the old free trade deal.” He feels the previous arrangement reflected a more Canadian brand of free trade that better served his association’s members.  read more »

The environment has been one of the hottest election issues going but the Canadian Wildlife Federation - Canada’s largest conservation group - and Pollution Probe - Canada’s largest environmental advocacy organization - haven’t received much press during the campaign. The cameras, instead, have been focused on those prepared to make unequivocal predictions: tub-thumping free traders like federal negotiator Simon Reisman, who have insisted the deal won’t affect the environment in the least, and fervent anti-free traders like the Canadian Environmental Law Association, who have claimed the free trade deal will lead to our environment’s certain destruction.  read more »

If we had free trade, says economist Miles Richardson, we might save Lyell Island. Lyell, a wilderness heritage of unparalleled beauty, is no ordinary island, and Rich­ardson is no ordinary economist. He is the president of the Council of the Haida Nation and a leader in the fight against the British Columbia logging giants eyeing the forests on Lyell, South Moresby and other islands in the Queen Charlottes, where the Haida have lived since time immemorial.  read more »