Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Burnaby—Douglas. It was as usual a very thoughtful speech on this issue.
However, I am kind of curious about the fact that the member for Burnaby—Douglas, who marshalls his facts so well and understands the legal niceties so well, seems to be able to distort the facts in a way that is quite astonishing and to come to conclusions that are so inconsistent with his own party's position.
The member for Burnaby—Douglas knows very well that the minister and the government have been consulting on this issue for the last couple of years. He started his speech by saying there has been no consultation and asking why this is so last minute. The minister has travelled across the country. He has met with stakeholders from every group. He has met with all provincial governments. The government has initialled two WTO challenges to U.S. legislation. In the WTO we are consulting on dumping duties. We have actually challenged their legislation on log exports. The minister has met with the predecessor of Mr. Zoellick and is meeting now with Mr. Zoellick. The Prime Minister is now discussing this issue with Vice-President Cheney.
We have organized a coalition of consumers groups in the United States that support the Canadian position because they understand the need to have lumber at a price that is reasonable and they understand that their own logging industry is driving up prices, which will suppress building in the United States.
All of this work did not happen in the last 20 minutes. This has been happening for a long time, so why is the member taking that position when he knows it is not true? Second, why is he so opposed, then, to the summit of the Americas?
If the hon. member believes in a fair trade agreement, if he believes in an opportunity to get these issues of environment, human rights and all the issues he is talking about on the table, why is he going to protest the summit of the Americas? That is exactly what we will be discussing there. Those are exactly the issues we will have an opportunity to discuss, but the hon. member wants to stymie that negotiation. He wants to kill it before it starts. Where is the consistency in his position?