Mr. Speaker, in Quebec, since the beginning of the softwood lumber crisis, some fifty businesses have been affected and 9,000 workers have lost their jobs.
Does the minister realize that the softwood lumber industry is a victim of the financial strangulation strategy of the United States, which intends to drag out the process so that Canada cannot hold out until the end?
It is high time, now that victory is at hand, for the government to help the companies and the workers to hold out until the end, and not to give in, even with an interim agreement, as it did in 1996. That would be going back to square one.