Canada is a resource rich country which relies heavily on its exports, with forest products being the single largest contributor to the trade surplus. For this reason, the study of trade-flows and market access issues is considered paramount to the forest industry's, and in turn, Canada's prosperity. The initial objectives of this project were: 1. To acquire wood product flow and market access information for Canadian product consumption in North America and Japan, with an emphasis on regulations (codes and standards); 2. To develop a particular market opportunity in one major non-residential structural wood product application in North America and/or Japan by initiating key codes and standards activities. Related to the first objective, it is recognized that virtually no solid wood product trade analysis has been reported in the literature beyond very broad aggregates, such as "softwood lumber". Given the diverse nature of wood product supply and demand (including species and grade of lumber), this greatly obscures the information used by government, forest product researchers and industry. The development of a data matrix and forecasting model with sufficient product detail will greatly aid in the identification of areas of competitive advantage that Canadian products possess (or potentially possess). As a result, two activities have been undertaken in the first year of this project. The first was to determine the extent of existing trade modelling efforts in North America and/or Japan, to avoid duplication and foster synergies. It was discovered that the Canadian Forest Service's Industry, Economics and Program Branch has been, and continues to develop, a model of the N.A. solid wood sector in conjunction with the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison. It was decided that the strongest support to these efforts could be obtained by focusing efforts on the extension of the product detail, and to conceptualize methods in which such detail could be incorporated into existing efforts. This constituted the second effort; a cross-section of the quantitative and qualitative information discovered is reported here. To address the second objective, the market for finger-jointed and MSR lumber use in wood trusses were investigated, including the identification of codes and standards barriers. However, the identification of the wood truss market has lead to tremendous technical product-related issues which must be dealt with before market access issues can be properly identified. This has lead to a separate proposed effort in conjunction with the Western Wood Truss Association of British Columbia. Due to the problems associated with the second project objective, and industry concerns heard at the Forintek Technical Advisory Committee Meetings over the broad scope of the first objective, this project is being terminated in favour of new project proposal. The concerns of industry were at least partially supported by the results of this project; it was determined that the level of wood product detail available is insufficient to adequately deal with market access issues. While the importance of identifying trade-flow trends has not diminished, the need to identify specific attributes of wood products in end-use applications has become clear, both in the identification of competitive threats from other wood products and non-wood substitutions. Thus, the new proposal is a natural extension of North America and Japan Market Access.