Mr. Speaker, three minutes is not a lot of time. I have reviewed the botched legislation, Bill C-24, and the mistakes that the government has made on that bill.
I would like to come back to the principle of the softwood sellout itself. Then, before I sit down, I will be offering an amendment to the amendment offered by the member for Beauséjour.
The following issues are issues that are addressed in the softwood selloff. First, and this is one of the dozens of reasons why members of this House should be voting against it, it is based on the falsehood that Canadian softwood lumber is subsidized. We are erasing four and a half years of legal victories. If we enact this legislation, any industry, not only our softwood industry, will have to start over to re-establish that jurisprudence.
The Americans are able through this mechanism to erase all of our legal victories when we are two legal hurdles short of winning a final and complete victory that establishes the jurisprudence. The sellout gives away $500 million to the American coalition. It has already indicated it is going to use that legally to attack us again. It was dry. It had no money left. It could not continue litigation, despite the government's incredibly absurd protestations to the contrary. Now we are giving them half a billion bucks to come at us again. We might as well have a “kick me” sign on the back of every single Conservative MP who votes for this. It is absolutely absurd.
Through this sellout, we are giving $450 million to the Bush administration. Through testimony this summer we found out this is unprecedented since the Richard Nixon committee to re-elect the president that the White House has had $450 million to dispense to grease the political wheels of the Republican Party. Obviously, that does not concern Conservative MPs. It does concern Canadians. This sellout can be cancelled at any time. The Americans can keep the billion dollars and run.
As we have pointed out consistently throughout the summer, clause 34 allows the Americans simply to allege non-compliance by Canada and cancel at any time. I could go on and on.
The principle is not only are we selling out our softwood industry but we are selling out any other Canadian industry that wants to use dispute settlement. The Americans clearly, two weeks ago, signalled that they are coming at us. They see that big “kick me” sign on the back of Conservative MPs and they have said they are going to appeal the notorious Byrd amendment. They are going to appeal it because this government has shown such incredible weakness.
I will move the subamendment. I move:
And that the amendment be amended by adding immediately after the end of the amendment:
specifically because it fails to immediately provide loan guarantees to softwood companies, because it fails to unsuspend outstanding litigation which is almost concluded and which Canada stands to win, and because it punishes companies by imposing questionable double taxation, a provision which was not in the agreement signed by the Minister of International Trade.
We will continue to fight this because this is bad for Canada, and this is bad for softwood and any other industry.