Thank you for those kind remarks.
The softwood lumber dispute is one of the more, shall we say, aggravating elements of North America's free trade zone. Its roots are fairly simple: we have one marketplace and two systems. In the U.S., trees and forests are owned privately, while they're owned publicly in Canada. The misunderstandings that arise when a public resource competes with a privately owned resource in the same marketplace creates huge amounts of suspicion and has resulted in one softwood dispute after another.
At the time that the softwood lumber agreement was signed by the government, the industry received it with what could be described as mixed reactions. Our ability to trade...we had tariffs, we had quotas, and we weren't universally generous in responding to it. Time has proven that the government was right and that those of us who were complaining were wrong. Over the last several years, if we had not had this softwood lumber agreement, we would have lost far more jobs. We would have been in much bigger trouble with the Americans.
At a time of very low prices, the number of means by which the U.S. could take action, including things like anti-dumping, are far greater. The stability and freedom from random attacks that agreement provided us actually saved our bacon. I wish I could say that everyone in the industry had figured it out when you signed it, but the truth of the matter is that government got it right. The industry is now of the view that given the continued market uncertainty, we would be best off with it being extended by at least two years.
I want to be very clear. There's almost nobody in the industry who likes the agreement. We don't like it, but it's a heck of a lot better than not having it. We are free traders; we'd prefer free and open competition. But the sad truth of the matter is that in Washington the people who work at monitoring Canadian activities and supporting the U.S. softwood industry comprise the biggest lobby. They have perfected the technique of harassing us, and that harassment has cost us huge amounts of money and huge amounts of business confidence. Having this certain regime—even though we'd prefer free trading—for another two years is what the industry has been asking for from coast to coast.