Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the member, having been down to Capitol Hill in Washington, realizes that pushing trade positions is a difficult sell to the American public.
I cannot speak directly for the softwood lumber industry in B.C. However, I know that under the Webster-Ashburton treaty between Maine and New Brunswick and the association between the maritime lumber bureau, which is made up of all of the maritime provinces, and the New England area of the U.S., we can make very good headway, not necessarily sawmill to sawmill but industry to industry. The government has failed miserably in that respect.
If we push our ideas and our claim to free trade to the right people in industry, we can be fairly successful. We were very successful in eliminating tariffs in the Christmas tree industry with the United States. We went to the producers and suppliers. It was very successful.
We need to have head to head meetings. The way to start is by having meetings between congressmen and parliamentarians so that everyone gets both sides of the story. The power lies in the sawmill industry, especially in the southern states of Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. The power is not in the Pacific northwest but rather in the mid-southern timber lobby.
There is an opportunity to put smaller players together so they understand the issue. Four or five huge conglomerates in the U.S. are very much in control of the American timber policy. People on TV talk about 150 American mills being shut down. They are not being shut down because of a cheap supply of Canadian lumber; they are being shut down because of productivity. They did not change with the times and are not competing with us on an even footing. That is the problem. That is what has led to their own demise. They want Canada to be the bogeyman, but that just is not true.