Mr. Speaker, sitting on a desk in Washington right now is a proposal entitled “Softwood Lumber: Proposal for an Interim Measure”.
If this offer is accepted by the Americans, it will end the Atlantic Canadian exclusion from the countervailing and will drag Atlantic Canada into a quota system that it has not been in since 1986. It will sabotage Atlantic Canada and the successful effort by the Maritime Lumber Bureau to gain and keep this important exemption.
Will the government simply contact Washington and retract this offer?