Mr. Speaker, indeed as my colleague implied in asking his question, there are serious implications in the lack of long term planning and long term vision in this particular bill. As has been addressed on a number of occasions today during the debate, there is not proper consideration for the impact. We look at the short term closely in impact on this but we do not look at the long term in terms of how it is going to affect other manufacturers, employers and producers in this country, how it is going to affect and impact on the consumer in this country.
Again, I cannot help but draw the comparison between this and the softwood lumber quota system. When we talk in terms of a long term plan, I have spent a lot of time on this and in my opinion there was not even a short term plan in terms of the softwood lumber quota. When it came in it was as if the Americans said “Here is your overall quota. Here is your total quota that we will allow to come into the United States under no fee, then under the low fee base and then under the upper fee base”. They did not have the slightest idea as to how they were going to implement that, how they were going to monitor and track it, how they were going to assign it out. It was something that they made up as they went along.
This particular bill is not quite that bad. I think we can fix some of the things in it but the problem is we have to fix them before we pass the bill. We cannot keep making things up as we go along, trying to determine whether or not we have done enough, or gee, we have problem, so let us put another little fix in here.
Once the legislation is passed it becomes much more difficult and onerous to try to impact further changes down the road. The government should go nice and slow, make sure that it makes the amendments that make sense according to what it has been hearing, make sure that it has considered the things that we have said. Also I would ask that the government take a very serious look at the balance I mentioned, the need to make sure that not only do we have our import house in order but also to make sure that exports are dealt with so that we have balance between what we take in and what we export out and the rules which both sides are going to play by.