Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to comment on the Lobbyists Registration Act and the amendment. It has been very interesting to listen to the comments by the members. I especially was interested in the comment by the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot who said that it would be better if the government brought forth better amendments. The very distinguished member for Saint John and I were just talking about these amendments. Right now we think perhaps there is another that could be made to the registration act, and that would be an amendment to include ministers.
I am sure the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot would support this amendment if we were to move it. Therefore we will talk about it right now and see where it goes. It ties in with another subject we have been talking about and that is the softwood lumber issue.
As we all know, the Minister for International Trade recently put on the table in Washington an offer with which hardly anyone in Canada agreed. We do not know where it came from and why the offer was put forth because we cannot identify who the minister was representing. He should be representing Canadians, the Canadian provinces and the softwood lumber association but we have a hard time finding out exactly from where this came.
Perhaps an amendment should be considered to ensure that ministers, if they were to lobby on behalf of a private sector or something like that, should have to register.
The minister talked about a Team Canada approach and working together with a unified program and everything, but we cannot find who he is representing. We would like to know who he represents. Perhaps this should come under an amendment to the Lobbyists Registration Act so ministers, if they did happen to represent someone else, should have to register.
The minister often stands up and says that they represent the regions. He has often said that they represent the Maritimes because it wants them to do certain things. However recently it became very clear that he did not represent the Maritimes. Four Atlantic provinces wrote a letter to him dated May 30, just days ago, about his proposal to drag Atlantic Canada into the quota system for softwood lumber. The four Atlantic premiers said:
Certain of Canada's actions have ignored the conditions specific to the region, and have thus been contrary to Atlantic Canadian interests
We would think that the minister would represent interests of all regions. Therefore we wonder who he is representing.
Then the premiers go on to say:
The most recent, and possibly most serious, of these actions is the unilateral offer made on May 23 by the Government of Canada to the United States. This offer includes Atlantic Canada with the rest of Canada in a two-year interim arrangement, where we would be restricted by a tariff rate quota.
We have never had tariff rate quotas and the four Atlantic premiers are saying that they do not agree with what the minister is doing.
We will explore this more. The minister is not obviously representing Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island because the premiers have all signed a letter to him just days ago saying, “Don't do this”.
Again, we do not know who the minister is representing. The letter goes on to say that this unilateral Canadian offer is unacceptable to both industry and government. Therefore the minister does not represent the industry in Atlantic Canada. We have to hone in on whom he is representing because we really do not know.
He has said in the media that he represents the Maritime Lumber Bureau and he is acting on its behalf. That is strange because the Maritime Lumber Bureau just wrote him a letter on May 29, just days ago, and sent a copy to all the Atlantic ministers and most of the MPs. This letter could not be clearer. It states, “We were excluded from the quota system and we must again be excluded from any attempt to allocate quota”.
This is diametrically opposite to what the minister is trying to do. He is trying to drag Atlantic Canada into the quota system. Therefore I guess he does not represent the Maritime Lumber Bureau. He said he did. He said that he was asked to work on behalf of the Maritime Lumber Bureau and speak on its behalf, but based on this letter from the Maritime Lumber Bureau, it appears that he does not represent it. Therefore we still have not found out who the minister represents in this case.
I just spoke to the Maritime Lumber Bureau in Fredericton at its annual meeting. The directors passed a motion authorizing the executive of the Maritime Lumber Bureau to take whatever action is necessary to prevent the government from going ahead with the offer that was tabled in Washington, for some strange reason on behalf of someone who we still have not found yet. A motion was tabled at the Maritime Lumber Bureau's annual general meeting which says that the executive is authorized to take whatever action is necessary, through liaison or action with members of Parliament, or just lobbying, or whatever the law allows. The directors of the Maritime Lumber Bureau are authorizing the executive to take legal action against the government to redress this situation where the government has put an offer on the table in Washington with which nobody in Atlantic Canada agrees.
If it is not Atlantic Canada, maybe he represents the people from Alberta. Amazingly enough to me, we have a copy of a letter that the Alberta Softwood Lumber Trade Council sent to the minister which says that the people in Alberta absolutely oppose this offer. They are against it completely, for different reasons than Atlantic Canada, but they are against this quota system which drags them into the system again. Again, the Minister for International Trade obviously is not representing the people of Alberta.