This is really important, Mr. Chair.
We refused to hear from the Independent Lumber Remanufacturers Association.
Here's what they have to say:
Tenure has always meant a renewable right to harvest over 10,000 cubic metres per year. If a company was not tenured, it was eligible to bid for timber in the B.C. small business enterprise program. In response to U.S. allegations of non-market administrative set stumpage, we now have the new B.C. Timber Sales program.
Under it, about 20% of the crown timber is put up for sealed bid auction in the form of non-renewable timber sale licences. Given that this wood is sold at arm's-length market prices via sealed bid, the results of this auction are then used in a formula to set the stumpages on the tenures.
The timber sale licences themselves are not tenure, or weren't tenure until the coalition insisted that they be called tenure in this agreement. In spite of our protests and protests from the B.C. government, Canada said okay to the coalition.
What we would do, Mr. Chair, if we do not approve this amendment, is that not only will we accepting the American definition of tenure, but we'll be ruling out of order all the independent lumber remanufacturers who use the B.C. timber sales program. The implications and the consequences are extremely serious.
We didn't hear from the Independent Lumber Remanufacturers Association; we refused to hear what they had to say. They are endeavouring as well as they can to avoid catastrophe in British Columbia.
Mr. Chair, yes, we do have to adopt the subamendment that changes this, because if we adopt this motion, not only are we putting in peril all the independent lumber remanufacturers across the country, particularly in British Columbia, but we are saying that those companies that have purchased through an arm's-length bidding process in the B.C. timber sales program will have to now give up their timber sales or they will be defined as having tenure. It's absurd. It is probably--along with clause 18--the most egregious error that was made in the drafting of this bill. If this committee rubber-stamps it, there will be trouble.