The vote by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) this week to label Canadian softwood imports as harmful to American interests is “completely without merit”, the British Columbia Lumber Trade Council has said. …The NAFTA dispute panel is expected to make its ruling by next fall… The WTO process could take years. …Duties against Canada collected so far by US authorities have been kept in a 500-million dollars bond. Canadian exporters will now have to pay the tariffs out of that bond, said trade expert John Ries at the UBC in Vancouver. “Going forward, (more) duties will be collected as well,” he told Xinhua… “This isn’ t a surprise. There was a preliminary determination on injury long before, and Canada is taking the dispute to both a NAFTA panel and a WTO panel. This is a lot like the last dispute in the early part of the 2000’s where it got to the same point.”