Mr. Chairman, my question is for the minister. We are all well aware that the U.S. commerce department brought in a countervail of 19.3% on August 10. What we should remember is that it originally asked for 39.9%, which would have completely crippled the industry, not just cost us 30,000 jobs in B.C. and more jobs in Alberta, Quebec and Ontario.
The issue for me is that we were willing to pay the countervail and we are there now. Did the minister consider at the time pre-empting the countervail with an export tax? If not, why not?