Mr. Speaker, the hon. member and his party, the Liberal Party, have to admit, and I have said this many times before, that they were content with 100% of nothing for the softwood lumber industry.
For 13 years they did nothing. They had calls for loan guarantees. They did not bother with them. In fact, just before the last election, they were prepared to sign a deal that was nowhere near as good as what the Prime Minister and our Minister of International Trade has achieved for Canada. We know this because our Minister of International Trade used to be theirs and now he is on this side. He had the leadership of this Prime Minister to go forward and accomplish this deal. Therefore, I give my appreciation to the Minister of International Trade.
This member has talked about litigation as though he thinks that if we win this one last court case that all of a sudden the Americans are just going to want to have a great working relationship with us, that we are going to get all of our money back and all will be solved.
I think the member is dreaming in Technicolor. This has been going on for 24 years. In fact, the last litigation has been going on for five years alone. The U.S. lumber coalition has told us that if we do not have this deal there is going to be continued litigation.
I do not know why the hon. member fails to listen to this and understand it because that is a fact. He talked about the Americans having deep pockets. He is darn right, they do, and they will continue to file lawsuits.
The member talked about this agreement suggesting that under the agreement that perhaps industry will be paying more in an export tax. That is not true. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there is an administrative review that is scheduled for this fall, so that without this deal what producers are paying in duties will go up to almost 15%. With this deal, it will not go past the 15%. They will have some stability. They will know what is coming as the year goes on.
If we do not have this deal, the hon. member needs to also recognize that with continued litigation, that there would be of course new duties and they could be as high as 20%. If the hon. member could please explain to us why, first of all, his party did absolutely nothing for the past 13 years and why he is choosing to ignore 90% of the industry in Canada that is supporting this agreement? Why is he choosing to ignore that our three major softwood lumber producing provinces are supporting this agreement?