Flaherty reluctant to counter U.S. pulp mill subsidy with Canadian payments
By John Geddes - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - 2 Comments
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is firmly reluctant to spend billions countering a massive new U.S. subsidy for pulp and paper producers by offering a comparable Canadian pay-out to forest products companies.
“We really don’t want to do that,” Flaherty told Maclean’s in an interview earlier this week. “That’s the sort of thing that’s been talked about time and time again around the G20 finance ministers’ table, around the leaders’ summits in Washington and London—to avoid protectionist measures.”
“This is the lesson of the 1930s,” he added. “This is a recipe for a downward spiral into depression.”
