Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here today.
I'd just like to pick up on a comment made by Mr. Perkins. It's important because he's the one who mentioned that this agreement is actually for seven to nine years. That hasn't changed. Yes, there's a termination clause, which would be at 24 months possibly--18 months plus the six months that we had spoken about before--but for those of you who are participating in this committee and those of you who have been watching the proceedings, if you've been listening to the opposition, they're trying to play two cards at the same time. The one card is that this is an absolutely fantastic deal for the U.S., and the second one is that they're going to terminate it, this great deal, after 24 months.
You just cannot have it both ways. So I want to underline the fact that your argument disconnects. I also want to underline the fact that the deal is for seven to nine years, as you gentlemen well know.
The second thing is that we have to inject some reality here. The first part of reality is that the lumber industry will get over $4 billion back. That's what they're lacking right now. What we heard from Mr. Paquette earlier today was that there's a lumber operation closing down in his riding. We heard from an earlier witness that there are companies closing down and there are workers being laid off. That's today; that's with no lumber agreement. So if that situation continues, we're going to see more of that, and that's what we're hearing from industry. This softwood lumber agreement will take back over $4 billion and inject it into our Canadian lumber industry.
Lastly, to pick up on a point that I think Mr. Shepherd might have made about continued litigation, if we have no softwood lumber agreement, the U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports has been very direct, very upfront and straightforward that they will renew litigation. They will do it. They are on record for having said so. So going back to the silver bullet, the fact that if we don't have a softwood lumber agreement everything is going to just disappear, all the problems will go away, I think that is untrue and very unrealistic.
The question I'd like to pose actually is to Mr. Perkins and to Mr. Shepherd, because you both represent companies in the lumber industry. No doubt you've heard your employees discussing softwood lumber at length. What I'd like to know is how would the softwood lumber agreement in fact help your employees, the men and women who work for you in our lumber industry?
Thank you.