Thank you.
Minister, through the chair, another issue we have heard a lot about is concern from Canada's independent lumber remanufacturers. As you well know, these are small and medium-sized businesses that buy low-grade lumber. Perhaps up to 15% of what has been traditionally shipped to the United States within the 34% of the U.S. market has been processed by these independent remanufacturers. They employ people in Canada and have a considerable impact in the economy of many small places across the Canada, in almost every region. They have seen huge job losses over the last five or six years.
They are having considerable difficulty getting access to the low-grade lumber, because many companies—probably suspecting an eventual quota system—in order to drive up volumes, have sent low-grade lumber to the United States to be included in the volume and have thereby deprived Canadian industry of value-added jobs here in Canada.
There's nothing more detrimental to the economy, in my view, than sending low-grade lumber to the United States, so that the remanufacturing is necessarily done there as opposed to being done by these small and medium-sized businesses in Canada. They're advocating that there be a carve-out; that if there is a quota system, there be a carve-out so that they're not competing with provinces for quota. As you know, they buy lumber on the open Canadian market. We worry that there'll be considerable disruption and job losses if they don't have access to some carve-out or some guaranteed mechanism to get access to wood. I'm wondering what provisions the government is looking at to help them as the framework discussions continue.