It is bad form to respond to my own post, but I made a few mistakes.

I didn't realize that PKG_PHASE was phased out since a few months ago.
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-changes/2006/07/10/0076.html
There are still a few references to PKG_PHASE, one in the pkgsrc guide
and one in pkgsrc/mk/buildlink3/BUILDLINK3_DG.

My example output was not very useful.  It shows the same thing for both
commands.

I am still looking for a solution to the problem.

Ben