Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for coming again.
As you have heard, for British Columbians, softwood is a huge deal. It's $12 billion in our economy and one in 16 jobs. My father worked in the sector. Every uncle in my family has worked in that sector, especially in the first generation that migrated to this area. I believe that my riding has the largest number of softwood lumber employees in the country, and along the entire Fraser River, we have tons of mills.
Canada has been struggling with this issue for decades. It's not a new problem. Softwood lumber agreements come. They have a short time of stability, and then they break apart and tariffs come up. This takes years, and then it's resolved again. This time we won, just recently, in August of last year. Why is the U.S., despite losing at the WTO, coming back again and raising tariffs from 10% to 19%, almost doubling them? What's their argument? I'm trying to think of what the rationale is for what they're trying to do.