Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Harder and Mr. Pelletier, for being here. It's an important study for a sector that employs over 400,000 Canadians.
Today, through your comments, we get a real sense of the frustration of business owners, communities and workers who have been impacted by, I would say, government inaction to reach a resolution on softwood lumber duties. It's been nine years and three U.S. presidents, and this government is unable to resolve the situation. Meanwhile, we had a previous government that did it in 79 days. This inaction has cost the sector about $9 billion to $10 billion in U.S.-imposed tariffs.
In August, the U.S. announced it's going to increase those tariffs to 14% from the current 8%. At the time, our minister of international trade said it was disappointing. We saw the Prime Minister on U.S. television then claiming it's a small issue. I'm not going to suggest it's disappointing. I'm going to say it's devastating for those companies and, more importantly, for workers in the communities they live in.
You know, in September, just following that announcement of the duties being increased, Canfor in B.C. announced the closure of mills in Vanderhoof and Fort St. John. That's 500 jobs.
Statistics Canada shows that 90,000 jobs have been lost in the sector since 1990. That's 40,000 in British Columbia alone. Twenty-four mills have closed in B.C. since 2016.
I'm going to start with you first, Mr. Harder.
What has been the impact on these communities and workers in your area because of this failure of the government?