Mr. Chair, with respect, we are debating a motion that will determine to what extent we can consider amendments. It is very much my right and my prerogative to point out some of the clauses that represent enormous difficulty and enormous danger that if this motion were adopted, if this legal procedural sledgehammer were adopted...what it would mean to our ability as a committee to deal with these important clauses.
I come back to clause 18, because that is something that was raised in the testimony on Tuesday and should have sounded alarm bells right through the Conservative members of the committee. What we're looking at in clause 18 is, now, the fact that.... The duty deposits, through the government's own legal machinery, take away 18% of the duties that are to be refunded to companies, and then in clause 18 we see that there is a special charge levied of 18%. That is double taxation that, as Mr. Harris asked about, would mean in the case of Canfor something in the order of $140 million that they would have to pay in the special charge.
We had testimony previously that alluded to the fact that somehow the government was going to fix it by regulation somewhere else. But we also know, the way clause 18 is currently worded, that the companies would be liable to pay the amount of the special charge by a fixed date. At this point, since we don't know when the actual moneys would be coming from the United States, perhaps it's a moot point because of the fact that the government is already making payouts of taxpayers' money. But the result of what has been, I think it's fair to say from everything we've heard, poor crafting on clause 18, is essentially that we have to gut and rewrite that clause, that amendment. We've had a number of amendments in that area that essentially deal with that particular issue. But clause 18 is something we need to have due consideration on.
Having already seen the procedural sledgehammer in the House that the government has been using to ram this through, and of course the procedural sledgehammer with the companies, we're now seeing the same procedural sledgehammer brought in at the committee stage.
Looking through the various amendments, such as Mr. Casey's amendment, and we see Mr. LeBlanc's amendments on clause 10, an important clause, one thing that the Maritime Lumber Bureau referenced very clearly is that it's a problem for the Maritime lumber industry, the way things are currently worded. In a sense, we didn't see the provision made for Maritime lumber that we expected to have. We have clauses that essentially are dealing with important aspects of the punitive nature of this particular bill. I mean, a bill that imposes an 18-month prison sentence on softwood business operators--18 months. That's incredible!
It is inconceivable! We are talking about a prison sentence for a person operating a business in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region. Not only would this individual lose his or her ability to operate, not only would the province of Quebec no longer be able to intervene, given these anti-avoidance provisions preventing it from assisting the forestry industry in any meaningful way, but, on top of that, directors of such companies in the Abitibi region would be sent to prison for 18 months. It could happen that the directors of a company be held responsible for that company's debts. That aspect is, it too, important.