Mr. Speaker, if I may, I would like to ask the minister three specific questions.
I think the House would be interested in hearing the minister on three specific questions.
First, I wonder if the minister could tell us exactly how much money is in fact left in the United States. We have seen $1 billion. We have seen more than $1 billion. I am wondering if the government has a dollar figure for the amount of Canadian money left in Washington as a result of this agreement.
In that same vein, we believe that some $500 million, half a billion dollars, will end up in the hands of the American Lumber Coalition, the American lumber producers who have caused such grief over the last number of years in terms of their harassment of Canadian companies. At a time when the Byrd amendment is in fact sunsetting and disappearing, I am wondering how the minister can explain that the government decided to leave that half billion dollars directly in the hands of American companies sort of as a reward, so to speak, for their harassment.
Finally, and again, the other half of the money being left in the United States is going for meritorious purposes, we are told. We would be curious to hear what precisely the minister and the government understand to be the kind of use this money will see. Some observers before a committee of this House have said that it in fact could be used for partisan purposes in the United States, a rather loose definition. I wonder if the minister could explain exactly where the meritorious portion of the money will be spent.