Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Welcome back to a place that's very familiar to you. I'll echo the words of the chairman: we appreciate your willingness to be with us this morning. Your involvement in these negotiations makes you a very important witness for this committee, to understand not only the process but the substance of what the government is trying to achieve.
Mr. Chairman, I have two quick questions for Mr. Wilson. Then my colleague Mr. Boshcoff may want to follow up, if there's time remaining.
Mr. Wilson, you referred to the meeting in Toronto of various ministers and yourself and business executives from the forestry industry a couple of weeks ago. My understanding is that in that meeting in Toronto some of the business executives asked you to go back to Washington to try to seek some changes, some improvements to specific aspects of the July 1 agreement, that they wanted to see.
The running rules were one issue we'd heard about publicly. I understand the issue was raised at that meeting, as were some concerns around the termination clause. Those issues have preoccupied members of the Liberal opposition. I'm wondering if you're in a position to tell us what success you've had in getting some changes to the July 1 agreement—you used the words “specific and administrative clarifications”—and what the nature of those clarifications might have been in the last number of weeks.
Also, Mr. Wilson, I have a question with respect to the Byrd Amendment. One of the things we in the opposition have found particularly difficult is the idea that over $500 million ends up directly in the hands of the American lumber coalition, which has caused so much grief to the Canadian industry in such an unreasonable way over so many years. We were wondering why the government, and you perhaps as the lead negotiator on many of these issues, accepting that some of the money may have had to be left there if that was the position needed to arrive at a negotiated conclusion, didn't look at other options; for example, as I know was the case in past discussions, such things as Hurricane Katrina relief, or low-income housing in the United States—“more benevolent purposes” was the phrase your predecessor used—as opposed to rewarding directly those who had pushed us so hard for so long.
Thank you.