Mr. Chair, I thank the hon. member for her intervention and for her support of this agreement, understanding that there is a way to go yet before we get to the end of the negotiations. However, the principles of the negotiations are what are important.
My question is straightforward. Before the advent of our softwood lumber agreement and before the advent of NAFTA, Nova Scotia, the part of the world in Canada that I am from, used to export $900 million worth of softwood lumber, dimensional lumber to Europe. When the EU was formed, we were shut out of Europe on a phytosanitary certificate concerning pine wood nematode. Instead of exporting to the east, we simply started exporting south. When the barriers started to be put up by the Americans, we got around those because we did not fall under countervail because much of our land is privately owned, However, we still lost our market in the EU.
That is an example of where a part of the country needed an additional marketplace but not one was available to it and we suffered directly because of that, even though we managed to settle our differences with the Americans.