Mr. Speaker, because of the government's inaction on this file the very survival of NAFTA is at stake here.
Michael de Jong, the B.C. minister of forests, in speaking before the Vancouver Board of Trade, said that it was no longer a dispute about softwood lumber, that it was all about the survival of NAFTA. He said that to the extent that the U.S. was signalling its unwillingness to be bound by decisions of the NAFTA panels, it casts doubt on whether Canada and Mexico could rely on the terms of NAFTA and casts doubt on the reliability of the U.S. as a trading partner. He asked whether we were on the verge of trade anarchy with the U.S.
Rising log exports are a big concern in my community. We have rules about log exports that state that we cannot export logs unless they are surplus. As a result of this dispute, the mills are down, production is down and therefore there is a surplus of logs. This really hurts people in my community.