Trudeau government mum on Japan’s invitation to rejoin global timber treaty

By Dylan Robertson
Associated Press in Victoria Times Colonist
February 21, 2023
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada

Jonathan Wilkinson

OTTAWA — The federal Liberal government has yet to respond to a months-old invitation from Tokyo to have Canada rejoin a global environmental organization that regulates the timber trade. A July 2022 briefing note obtained through an access-to-information request shows that Japan has asked Ottawa to be part of the International Tropical Timber Organization. The group works with producer and consumer countries to share knowledge about conservation practices and to promote the sale of sustainable timber. The organization currently includes 37 exporters of timber and 38 countries that import it, including all other G7 states. Canada was among the signatories to the 1983 treaty that originally created the organization, but Stephen Harper’s Conservative government pulled out of it in 2013. …Eight months after Japan’s invitation, Natural Resources Canada says it “continues to actively consider whether to rejoin the treaty” but will not elaborate on that process.

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