Madam Speaker, I listened closely to the comments from my colleague for Beauce. I know they have a very active and very important forest products sector in that area. Of course, we all know what the issue is. The issue is market share. Every time we take more than 30% of the softwood lumber market share in the United States, it comes back, it reinvents the rules and changes them to suit its needs.
I find it quite astounding that we have a system of countervail where we have to defend our system but we cannot attack the American system. We know there are subsidies in the U.S. system. They take place at the state and local government levels, whether it is property or sales tax abatements, industrial land or co-generation. Because of the process in the U.S. system, we cannot attack its system.
I think there is a much better method which is called net subsidies. The U.S. could only launch a countervail if there was a net over a de minimis, a net subsidy difference that was important; net its subsidies against ours. However, why should we have to defend our industry and our process because it is different from its? We cannot attack the U.S. system? The Americans are now alleging that lumber from crown land is moving through the maritimes into the U.S. market. That is equally false as well.
Could my colleague tell us why we cannot come up with a better system where we could challenge and attack American subsidies? Why do we have to defend our own system? Is that not wrong?