Very quickly, in terms of being a worse agreement or a less worse agreement and so on, I won't necessarily get into this. In the end, the union I represent actually backed the softwood lumber agreement. We knew it was a bad deal, but with the state of the forestry industry at the time we didn't have much of a choice. Our members were suffering and we needed to put an end to this suffering. It was a very bad deal. And we feel that this is a bad deal, for the same reason that Monsieur Grenier advanced last week, which is that Canada always seems to be negotiating out of a position of weakness.
The United States doesn't necessarily need that. We went to the U.S. at a point when we were vulnerable, and we said we needed a deal--as Mr. Grenier said, at any cost--and we got that deal. We fully support Mr. Grenier's assessment on this. When Canada negotiates with the United States, because of the sheer difference in size we need to be very careful with what we're giving.
And what we're giving right now is a lot more. You mentioned $1 billion. I think the number that was mentioned by Mr. Sinclair was $4 billion to $5 billion maximum--it might be less than that--for temporary access. That actually ended shortly after.... All the contracts under the fiscal stimulus in the U.S. ended at the end of February. Now Canada will likely only have access--possible access--to subcontracts coming out of this. In exchange, the number that was submitted was a bit over $27 billion, and this is very possible as well.
Mr. Brison mentioned that the permanent access we'd be giving would be worth about $33 billion a year. Those numbers are coming from the exporters and manufacturers. It's very possible. The problem is that we'll be giving access almost without limits. We'll basically be shackling ourselves, our provinces, removing them from the possibility of using this procurement for local development.