I agree with Mr. Tonks. What we need is exactly what you enunciated, and, Mr. Chairman, I don't think we can waste a whole bunch of time in getting to that point.
I hate like heck to.... I wish he'd take off his microphone, but we have here one of the leaders in the forestry industry in all of Canada. He ran Bowater for a good number of years. He knows that business. He knows it so well that they took him out of Thunder Bay and made him part of the Algoma Steel empire, and you know what's happened with Algoma Steel in the last little while. Then he also brought people together to combine our energy policy with St. Mary's power and Algoma Steel, so he's been a facilitator in this business.
We have to get to what you said, Mr. Tonks. If we can impress anybody, Mr. Chairman, we have to do it very fast, because it's a disaster.
Mr. Coles, I handled the softwood lumber issue from the time that we inherited it, when there was a 50% duty, and then we decided that the best deal we could make was a quota system. I can recall vividly selling the quota system to about 20 softwood lumber producers, and they all thought it would never work. I think the quota system during that period of time was 5.5 or 5.6 years. Those were the best years the softwood lumber industry ever experienced in the history of Canada. I was also at the table when the softwood lumber industry decided they no longer wanted the quota system. They thought they should have free trade; the horror stories started from there.
What I found--this is a point I want to make and I want your comments on how the hell we're going to get around it--was that nobody was coming together on the fundamental issue of what was wrong in the softwood lumber industry. I found that the corporations, the owners, the sawmills were spending more time on negotiating with themselves than on negotiating with the United States. They weren't looking after the needs of the communities. As we go down this road again, I want to know that we never make those mistakes again. I want your comments on that.