Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm glad to actually have the opportunity to speak to the clause 14 amendments--CPC-3--with the subamendments that we have adopted from Mr. LeBlanc. That is helpful, because from the way the amendment was originally crafted, what we ended up with was a situation in which primary processing had to happen in four provinces before the calculation could be made. It was obviously not in the interests of the maritime lumber industry.
The subamendment that we have adopted helps to clarify exactly what the primary processing has to be, but we still end up with this punitive charge on maritime lumber. It is an extremely tight margin for maritime lumber. In the case that you have an aggregate of total production in a calendar quarter such that total inventory is exceeded, we have this excessive punitive charge that is levied against maritime lumber. I don't see how any representative from the Maritimes could vote for it. We have to reduce that charge.
It's very clearly a formula that's set out in the agreement, but the percentage numbers are set out as an appendix--not in the agreement itself, where there is simply provision for a formula. That's an important thing to note, Mr. Chair.
We have to approach this whole issue very carefully to ensure that we're not penalizing the maritime lumber industry in the way that we're penalizing the industry elsewhere in the country. Let there be no mistake, Mr. Chair; this is a punitive bill. This is a bill that bullies and cajoles the lumber industry across the country.
It's important to note that only 25% of the industry has actually signed on to EDC; 75% said no way, including Canfor Corporation. Canfor Corporation has not signed on to the EDC process. That must raise serious questions, Mr. Chair, when you have 75% of the industry not going through EDC to get their 67-cent dollars, when they can go directly to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and get, as we saw last Friday, 100% dollars because of the win on October 13 in the Court of International Trade. That win has forced the hand of Customs and Border Protection, and now those moneys are starting to flow. Those first cheques from Customs and Border Protection are going directly to the softwood companies.
We're penalizing them in a wide variety of ways. Why would we penalize the maritime lumber industry for moving just notionally above what their actual aggregate sum of total production and total inventory is? We're putting handcuffs on them. Why? We won in the Court of International Trade. There's no reason to do this when we have, as we know, a Court of International Trade ruling that says all of the unliquidated entries must be liquidated, which is what U.S. Customs and Border Protection is doing--making those payments directly now, in 100% dollars. We're putting a straitjacket on the maritime lumber industry, imposing a punitive charge that is completely inappropriate.
It's hard to say what we should do now, Mr. Chair. We have a situation in which we have an amendment that penalizes severely the maritime lumber industry. It shouldn't. It doesn't have to. We have the court judgment--
