Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of points on that and the first one has to do with raw logs. It is a sad commentary when right now, as we speak, roughly four to five sawmills in Washington state and Oregon are being fed with raw logs from British Columbia. Even though there is a protocol with the B.C. government and it takes the advice from the B.C. government as to what percentage and how raw logs should be exported, we know that the federal government has the final decision. It can decline to send any raw logs to the United States.
In fact, in one of the countervailing duty actions taken by the United States, the United States had the audacity to argue that because we restrict the export of raw logs that constituted a subsidy because it essentially, in its case, lowered the domestic price for logs. Whereas we know that the reason we want to restrict the export of raw logs is that we want to see more value added in Canada. I would like to see the federal government get much more aggressive with respect to limiting the export of raw logs.
With respect to the other question, I do not see how this particular agreement encourages more value added in Canada. There are some exemptions for the manufacturers but it really does not deal with those issues. It deals with 2x4s, dimension lumber, and I do not see there being any incentive. In fact, it could work the other way. Under the anti-circumvention clause, if there are any moves made to support and encourage the value added it might be attacked by the U.S. producers.
The Canadian industry has always been quite creative in trying to move up the value added chain to get exempted from the softwood lumber agreement. At one time, companies drilled holes into 2x4s to get them exempted from the softwood lumber agreement. Therefore, if they can be more creative and more imaginative to get outside of the softwood lumber agreement maybe it provides that, but I think that is very indirect incentive that was not designed but it might have some limited impact.