Madam Speaker, I do not agree with the hon. member on every occasion, but I would say to him that if he followed my public and private record on the softwood lumber agreement, he would know that I had strongly advised against its adoption. I was consistently opposed to it and I remain opposed to it.
I think we all have to understand that withdrawing from it will in and of itself lead to significant challenges in the United States and with the United States for the very reason that I have given. The industry in the United States is determined to resist fair and free competition from Canada.
However, I would make the point to the member, and through him to my colleagues, to say one of the great illusions of the last five years on trade was the Prime Minister of Canada coming in and saying, “I've got peace in our time. I've got an agreement that's going to give us peace in our time”. It was not true in 1938 and it is not true today. We did not get peace in our time with the softwood lumber agreement. We simply got another base, another platform from which the Americans can continue to harass and challenge every step of the way, every provincial policy and every federal policy, because the key issue for them is that they never want the Canadian industry to reach a point of competitiveness where it is able to get the products it wants and needs into the United States at their expense. For them it is a zero-sum game and that is the problem--