Thank you very much, and welcome to the committee. It's good to have somebody from the north island talking about forestry.
In terms of the independent arbitrator, there is a provision in the framework agreement for an arbitration mechanism outside NAFTA. As you know, chapter 19 of NAFTA is the primary dispute resolution mechanism, but when you go to chapter 19 there are all kinds of problems.
You don't need to have a very persuasive or powerful case if you're on the U.S. side and you want to bring a countervailing duty or an anti-dumping duty. In fact, we've consistently seen that the cases have been flimsy. But you can go through years and years of interim duties, where companies are paying out cash duties, and it takes something like five years, as we have seen, to bring the duties down to even a modest level.
Chapter 19 is a cumbersome way of resolving disputes. It is hoped that by having an agreement, first of all, the disputes would be relatively technical in nature and wouldn't be great neutron-bomb types of attacks or problems. Those would be better dealt with through an arbitration mechanism within the agreement itself. I would think that would be much cheaper than chapter 19, simply because you're not depending so heavily on big Washington or Toronto law firms, and so on, to do a lot of the work.
You referenced that a London arbitrator has been appointed. To my knowledge, there has not been a specific arbitrator and there is not a specific arbitration at this time. But the agreement provides for the arbitrators to be non-North American for the purpose of ensuring there would not be a perception or a reality of bias. That's what is going on there.
You spoke about Canada's position and a counter-position from the United States. That is true. In fact, what one tends to see in these negotiations is that Canada will put a position forward and the United States will then put a position forward. Everybody wants to hold the pen when drafting the agreement, because it's perceived that if you hold the pen, you have an advantage.
Right now we are in the process of trying to merge the U.S. text with the Canadian text. That's where the grinding and the bumping in the negotiations tend to occur. We're working through what the American side would like to see in the detailed agreement and trying to reconcile that with the Canadian side. It will hopefully work out to advantage.
Your concerns about public policy issues and fair trade are well taken. We are certainly cognizant of that. Indeed, when Mexico entered into NAFTA there was some kind of clause or provision included in NAFTA because of concerns about labour and the environment in Mexico. The same would apply with other free trade agreements. We would very much want to try to ensure that another country was not taking advantage of lax environmental practices, labour standards, or intellectual property protection as a way of competing against our companies. It is something that we consider.