There are a couple of points. First of all, the history of the softwood lumber dispute shows clearly that this matter is never resolved unless the president and the prime minister both take a direct interest in finding a solution. Minister Freeland and Prime Minister Trudeau have both been very active on this file since the election and the appointment of the new government last fall.
First things first: raising the profile of this issue with the U.S. is a critically important step in finding a solution to the file. That's number one.
Number two, if we don't make progress during these 100 days or in the period leading up to the expiry of the standstill that was built into the 2006 agreement, which expires in the middle of October of this year, we would fully expect the U.S. industry to petition their government to bring another trade case against the Canadian industry.
While I'd like to think that saner heads will prevail, the practice in the U.S. is that when their industry petitions for a trade case, the U.S. trade authorities fall into line and institute a trade case. As a result, we would expect that we would move back into a period of time in which the U.S. government would investigate practices in Canada. In all likelihood, we would end up facing some form of countervail and anti-dumping duties next spring, and then we'd be faced with ongoing litigation to deal with that and trying to negotiate an agreement when significant duties are hanging over our head during that period of time.
I think there's significant value in trying to move this thing forward before we get into that type of situation. I think that's why on March 10, when the Prime Minister met with the President, the 100-day period of time for officials in the two countries to work together to try to develop a framework was put in place. Our hope is that by the end of that 100 days, which I think is the middle of June, we'll see a clear framework of a new agreement in place, subject only to refinement and the proper legal papering of the agreement. That would be our hope.
If it goes much beyond that, I think U.S. political cycles will be such that it will be very difficult for anybody to accomplish very much before the standstill period expires.