Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River shares the concerns. I congratulate him on his election and joining us in the House. Coming from a forest and resourced based community as I do, he has the needs and concerns of his community at heart.
With regard to the softwood lumber agreement, I do not think when that conflict arose, that anybody imagined it would go on for six years. Just to remind members, we were facing punishing duties of 27% between the countervail and the anti-dumping duties, a 27% barrier for our products to jump over.
In the last Parliament when the Conservative government was formed, we made it a priority to address this issue. It took a lot of political capital to get any agreement there. If members think this was the biggest issue burning in Washington, many would be disappointed. Washington was not seized with solving this problem. In fact, the American industry was winning every day that process was under way.
What we were able to accomplish was not a perfect arrangement, but it did bring $4 billion back to our industry. I do not know when that money would ever have come back, the roughly $5 billion that had been invested by Canadian companies in duties with the U.S. commerce department. However, that money has come back to our industry.
I know there were members who thought we were on the verge of winning, but it was naive to think that the most litigious country in the world was ready to roll over on this for our benefit. We were facing another round on softwood lumber. The Americans simple renewed the challenge, changed the figures and away we would go for another round. It is very uncertain where we would have been if we had not come up with that solution.
The member has concerns about the company he mentioned. We have a very competitive challenge around the world. Where I come from, we have hundreds of years old Douglas fir prime timber. I know there is fine timber in Ontario as well. We have some of the best timber in the world, but it is facing tough competition from inferior wood products that are glued together with laminates and resins today and are structurally just as sound as our best fir products.
We need to develop more value added products. We need to gain access to markets. One thing the softwood lumber agreement has done is make greater access to U.S. markets, tragically at a time when the U.S. market itself is in great trouble and demand for any products is reduced because of its housing crisis and so on.
It is a complicated issue. I am sure we will all be interested in working together to see the forest sector come out of this stronger than before.