Mr. Speaker, I had a question some time ago on softwood lumber. What brought my question about was the fact that from the Progressive Conservative Party's perspective we did not see any specific agenda that the government had to deal with the full-fledged crisis in softwood lumber. We felt the government did not have a plan or direction. It was treading water and not responding to a very important issue facing Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Rural Canada depends upon the softwood lumber industry as a major job producer. It produces a large percentage of the gross domestic product in Canada. It is an important issue.
I have another point to which I would ask the parliamentary secretary to respond. The government keeps saying that the softwood lumber industry is part of free trade. What has it done about it? How many delegations and when did we start sending them to the U.S. to speak to our counterparts in a minister to minister type of situation? The Minister of Industry says one thing while the Minister for International Trade says another. The Prime Minister is not responding at all.
Six provinces had free trade with the United States. The Atlantic accord kept Atlantic Canada out of the softwood lumber agreement and provided free trade for Atlantic Canada, which has a long tradition in free trade going back to the 1800s between New Brunswick and Maine. Manitoba and Saskatchewan were also included in free trade.
There were only four provinces that did not have free trade: British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. Those four provinces obviously need to get in on the free trade agreement, but everyone has been sucked into the vortex. Now, as everyone predicted, the Americans are playing hardball by putting in countervailing duties and anti-dumping is being claimed against all 10 provinces in Canada.
The countervail was not a problem. We have beaten countervail before, especially in eastern Canada, and we would expect to beat it again. The anti-dumping became a much more serious problem because that included all the provinces automatically and there was no opt out clause for anti-dumping.
We have seen a long list of mistakes that the government has made. It did not start two or three years ago dealing with the Americans on softwood lumber. It had no plan, no direction and no initiative on the Canadian side to deal with this extremely important issue.
We have local sawmills in the South Shore riding that I represent which have shut down and are no longer exporting because they do not know what is down the road. Quite frankly they cannot put themselves into the precarious position where they possibly get slammed with an anti-dumping situation and a large fee or a countervail duty to which we do not expect to be susceptible but could be. Every time something like this issue goes to an international court it becomes a precarious situation.
I would like to hear the government tell us what it has done about the softwood lumber agreement and when it expects to see an end to it.