Thank you, Minister, for being here today. I appreciate it.
I'm going to bring it back to the softwood lumber situation. Thanks for your call last week. Some of the first words you spoke, as you did today, were about the impacts that are going to happen. You said there will be layoffs and and job losses. In the short term you pointed out that there are existing programs that can help in some way in those matters—E.I. for the workers that lose their jobs, and EDC and BDC loans for the companies that may require some sort of support.
This is a very difficult situation, as other people have mentioned. I'm from British Columbia. The last time this happened we lost 100 mills or something like that. I forget the exact number. We lost tens of thousands of jobs. It really changed the face of a lot of communities, so I think it calls for more direct measures from the government to help the situation across the country.
We've seen Ontario and Quebec asking for loan guarantees from the federal government in the short term. Also, during the last softwood lumber dispute, the Martin government provided funds of, I think, $20 million to the forest industry to offset their legal costs stemming from the dispute, money that that helped those companies in the short term.
In terms of that and what we can do today, because a lot of these small companies are going to be making big retroactive payments very soon, are loan guarantees something that your government is contemplating providing, and will you contemplate providing help for legal fees?