As I mentioned earlier, what we expect from the government is certainly a loan guarantee program to keep your industry healthy while you still can. Why would you want to see more shuttered mills, more unemployment? It doesn't make any sense.
Initiate the loan guarantee program. We've been talking to the government about it for two years at least now. Mr. Grenier says four years. Get it done; initiate the program tomorrow, and allow your industry some strength so that they can go to banks and take out a loan. It's not a bailout and it's not at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer; it's just a guarantee so that a company can go to a bank and access money to replace the money that's been stolen from them over the last five years.
The other thing I would like to mention is that the whole idea of an agreement is that it's supposed to bring certainty and stability. We were told it was supposed to bring growth and prosperity. That's how it was sold back on April 27--growth and prosperity. Well, ladies and gentlemen, at $302 at a 30% market share under option B in Ontario--and if there are MPs here from Ontario, you'd think they'd be concerned about this--we don't have enough quota to operate our mills even near capacity. That represents over a 10% reduction for us in the board feet that we can export--that's bigger than one of our larger mills. That's a considerable chunk of board feet to take out of your province--and then you turn around and tell the citizens not to worry, because the agreement's going to bring growth and prosperity?
Well, I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I can't do that. When I go home to the north, I have to tell them exactly what this agreement will deliver unless we listen to the changes from the businessmen who operate these mills every day, who employ Canadians, who sustain their families. Why would we not listen to business people who have been running our economy for years?
The other thing is that we have to be careful because financial analysts--and I have all the newspaper stories here--have made it quite clear that the agreement as it's written right now will certainly favour the largest companies. What happens to the ma-and-pa companies? I have members in my association who have been operating the same sustainable licence in the same family, into the fifth generation, for 150 years; what happens to them? Analyst after analyst has said this agreement favours the largest of the large.