Okay. I'll get right to my questions, then. Thank you, Minister.
It's been a long time coming since my initial questions in October 2020 were unanswered regarding the softwood lumber agreement. In 2015, your government stated it was going to get a softwood lumber agreement signed within its first 100 days. We then saw then-president Obama attend our Parliament, but there was no agreement. We have since seen record tariffs on our Canadian lumber producers of up to 20%—and over 20%, actually.
From an article in December 2019, that inaction cost Canada over 140,000 jobs. That was pre-COVID. They're logging, trucking and mill jobs, including many in my own northern B.C. communities of Mackenzie, Prince George, Fort St. John and many others. It cost $4 billion in revenue for B.C. alone. We saw that in August 2020, which you referred to, the WTO unanimously ruled with Canada, then the U.S. appealed that decision in September 2020.
I questioned the bureaucrats in October 2020 if they could update us on this important file. Now I'm going to be more specific, understanding that you recently had a bilateral meeting with the new Biden administration. Was the softwood lumber agreement or tariffs on softwood lumber specifically brought up in the bilateral meeting between you, the Prime Minister and President Biden? There was no public mention of that, or that our forest sector at all had been discussed publicly, for that matter.