Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the member's comments. I will refer first to what the minister said when he was in the House. In answer to a question I had asked, he said that his department had been working on the looming deadline for softwood lumber for quite some time.
I was correct in my comments when I said that may be true, but the fact is that the government has not been revealing that to the Canadian public or to workers in the forest industry, which has caused a lot of consternation and apprehension. It is only within the last several weeks, subsequent to the United States starting its sabre rattling, that the minister said that the government has been working on this and that it has started to take a tough stand on behalf of Canada.
I wonder what progress has been made, for example, in dealing with the other large lobby groups in the United States, such as the American coalition for affordable housing and the lobby group that represents lumber retailers and builders in the United States. What has Canada done to try to draw on their strength as lobbyists to help us with the U.S. government and the senate? Where do we stand?
We cannot get into negotiations per se on softwood lumber because once we get into negotiations it commits us to negotiating another agreement. That is an important point. We could have high level discussions, but we would like to know, as would thousands of Canadian forestry workers, where we are in these talks. They see a looming deadline three weeks from now. They hear sabre rattling from both sides. Where are we in these talks?