Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To the witnesses, thank you for coming. Many of you have travelled considerable distances to be here today. These panel discussions are always interesting, because the five of you sitting there have, in many cases, different perspectives. If it were simple, I guess people would have found a solution to this problem, but we can learn a lot from your presentations, and I thank you.
I had three specific questions, Mr. Chairman. The first one would be perhaps to Ms. Blenkhorn or to Mr. Irving. They both have a considerable collective memory of this fight, which has lasted a quarter of a century.
At the end of her comments, Ms. Blenkhorn said that she supports the entering into of “an” agreement with the United States. I think on behalf of the maritime or Atlantic lumber industry, you're absolutely right to take that position. Asking you to speculate is difficult, but if in fact this agreement fails either because Parliament says no or because the required percentage of the industry does not agree to withdraw the litigation, for example, what provisions do you think the government needs to take to preserve the historic exemption of Atlantic Canada? In the exchange of letters in 1996, I believe, which led to what was known as the maritime accord, you in fact had a separate agreement that removed Atlantic Canada from many of the punitive trade actions. What do you think needs to be done, from the perspective of either your provincial governments or the Government of Canada, in the event that two months from now this agreement does not go ahead? That would be a question for the Maritime Lumber Bureau.
Frank Schiller said something interesting about his concern about circumvention, or his concern about a tracking system.
In previous appearances, Mr. Schiller, you have said that a certificate of origin program, like the one in fact used by the Maritime Lumber Bureau, may help many of your members ensure that in fact there is no circumvention or accidental reporting that can lead to further harm because inaccurate information is in fact presented. I'm wondering if you have some ideas of what could be specified in some of the administrative adjustments that Minister Emerson referred to this morning as still being possible?
Finally, Mr. Rutenberg, you mentioned the $500 million of Canadian deposits that is being left in the hands of the U.S. lumber coalition, which, in our view, was illegally collected. With the repeal of the Byrd Amendment upon the horizon, we find it rather ironic and unfortunate that the U.S. lumber coalition itself ends up with those dollars in their hands. If I understood your comments, you said that they could then initiate at some future point another trade action if in fact litigation has been so beneficial to the U.S. industry, as I think we can all agree it has been. Our concern is that, as Mr. Irving said, someone exercises the cancellation of the termination agreement and then puts everybody back behind the eight ball, but now they'll have $500 million gracieuseté de l'industrie canadienne to then turn around and harass further. That would be, in our view, a deplorable situation. I'd be curious to hear your comments on that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.