This is again symptomatic, Mr. Chair, of how this bill has been approached generally. The government has thrown in an amendment that presumably they received advice on--I don't know; it's hard to say. The government apparatus has enormous resources, so one would expect they'd be able to get it right.
But we have clause 15 that originally was submitted to delete clause 15, and now we're having to vote on clause 15. I think it's emblematic or symptomatic, if you like, Mr. Chair, of how this has been conducted generally. So far today...and it's only 1:10; we've been debating the clause-by-clause essentially for only about nine hours. What we have done in those nine hours so far is zap the lumber remanufacturers and zap the historic definition of “arm's length”, which I think is something that should be the shame of all Canadians, Mr. Chair, that we're seeing this kind of irresponsible conduct.
Now we have a government deletion that is not in order, a kind of strange approach to clause 15. But it's important to note what's in clause 15. Subclause 15(1) says:
If a person exports a softwood lumber product from Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut, the amount of the charge with respect to that export is nil.
Subclause 15(2) says:
An exported softwood lumber product is deemed exported from Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut if the product underwent its first primary processing in one of those territories from softwood sawlogs originating in one of those territories.
That is the emphasis in clause 15. The government wants to delete that, yet the definition is there, so it doesn't make sense to try to delete clause 15.
What we actually want and what we should expect, Mr. Chair, is more clarity, not less. We should have greater attention to detail to ensure that the coalition doesn't have the ammunition that they've already gained so far today from the adoption, I'm sad to say, of amendments that are badly botched and actually create more problems than they resolve.
So we now have a government motion before us to delete in a very clear sense the territorial exemption. That is something I would oppose. Why would we delete the territorial exemption? Do we know for sure that what is covered in the amendments that have been proferred on the maritime exclusion--