Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the comments of my colleague. While I actually agreed with some things he said, I am afraid he took too much credit for the previous Conservative government. If the Conservative government had dealt with the root causes when it had the opportunity, we would not be in this position today.
Does the member not understand that this government has built the strongest national consensus on this issue ever, unlike the previous Mulroney government that he proudly cites? It did not deal with this in a long term solution and that is why we are back in this problem today.
Does the member not understand that there was a conscious decision of the provinces and industry to let the softwood lumber agreement run out, which would then gave us free trade? Except the Americans refused to accept that, refused to live up to being the free traders they claimed to be and launched these punitive actions.
I want to correct one point. For the U.S. trade representative, Mr. Zoellick, to say that Canada is not interested in trade talks is simply wrong. I do not know if my friend is quoting him correctly but I hope not because Mr. Zoellick knows better.
Canada is prepared to sit down when the United States is prepared to look at meaningful progress in these talks, otherwise we will fight this out at the WTO.