Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. I have taken part in every stage of the softwood lumber negotiations.
Let us think back to the first negotiations. A number of years ago, the then Minister of International Trade, Pierre Pettigrew, said: “We have a very good legal case. We will win this battle against the Americans and then we will truly have free trade on softwood lumber again”. However, a major problem came up along the way. The softwood lumber industry realized that the government was not prepared to support it in a satisfactory manner by providing loan guarantees. We ended up falling into the Americans' trap of dragging out the negotiations as long as possible. Even though we were winning every legal battle, the forestry industry was on its last legs. The companies asked us to support the agreement to get their money back so that they could continue to survive on the market and not disappear. It was becoming a rather paradoxical situation. We may have won a legal victory on our position, but there would be no one left in Quebec or Canada to celebrate.
Earlier my colleague made reference to the Free Trade Lumber Council, where Mr. Grenier gave some very serious advice. The weak point of the negotiation was the fact that the Liberal government at the time failed—like the current Conservative government—to adequately support these companies when it was time to do so and, in the end, we were forced to accept this very bad agreement. In any case, it is not very advantageous to Quebec and Canada.
Are we not sending a very negative message to our American neighbours and to the rest of the world that might is right? If the companies had received help through loan guarantees at the right time, today we would not be in this position of weakness where we have to support this motion. I understand that the industry asked us to do so. I believe that the way things unfolded this was the only solution. Nonetheless, could we not draw some lessons from this for the future? Before launching such offensives, we have to make sure we have the financial means to support the industrial sector concerned.