Mr. Speaker, indeed, no matter where we live in this country, we see how this tax and the government's inaction are putting us in a dead end.
I know the member's region a little. If 25% of the softwood lumber is processed in Quebec, there would be 75% for the rest of Canada; I know that his region is badly affected. The government keeps telling us: “But wait”. Last week, it told us: “Let us wait and see if job losses are caused by the tax”. Come on!
Everyone now thinks that we have already started losing jobs. It even began a year ago, because there were talks about what was going to happen to us. There is no need to wait any longer to take action.
I totally agree with my colleague on this issue. Unfortunately, we do not have a government that likes to take quick action. It prefers to find excuses to justify what is happening to us.
The minister said that everything had been done and that unemployment insurance was there to help workers. Come on, seasonal workers are no longer being helped through employment insurance; there is almost no one left who manages to get help. It is time to act.
We are proposing, among other things, a program that would solve the problem temporarily before we can solve it definitely.