Mr. Speaker, the softwood lumber dispute is costing Canadian and American jobs and is benefiting only a handful of U.S. lumber producers and forest landowners.
Members of American Consumers for Affordable Homes wrote to President Bush yesterday and asked him to intervene in a preliminary decision to impose countervailing duties of 19.3% on lumber imports from Canada. They are appealing to Bush on the basis that the tariff is negatively impacting the housing sector and other lumber dependent industries that provide seven million jobs in the United States.
The dispute has also caused 15,000 forestry workers to be laid off in British Columbia alone, including many in my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan. Federal government bonding guarantees will help put some people back to work.
The deadline to apply for an exemption to the U.S. tariff has recently passed. Now we discover that the Liberal government neglected its duty to apply for a blanket exemption for Canadian companies. This is the kind of neglect and inaction the government has displayed from the beginning on the issue. The 2,000 laid off workers in my riding want to know why the government has put them out of a job.