International Trade committee  This particular lobbyist was asked to take a year off from his job as vice-president of Lindal Cedar Homes because the membership of the ILRA realized that somebody had to look at this thing full time. So I took a pay cut and did that. Unfortunately for me, that was five and a half years ago.

International Trade committee  From B.C.'s non-tenured guys, a botched deal would be something that didn't have exit ramps within a period of time, so that you could survive the interim measures, and that didn't recognize the legal precedents that we've established in victories, and those kinds of things.

International Trade committee  Mr. Higginbotham was referring to some of the stuff that I had to skip over. Regarding the company allocation of quota under option B, the remanufacturers were already somewhat curtailed by the old softwood lumber agreement in the late nineties. Then in 2001, we became subject to the ad valorem tax on the entered values, so we were paying duty on our propane for the forklift, and leases, and insurance, and heat, and light, and every other thing.

International Trade committee  The answer to the first question is that the consultation has been wholly inadequate, and I think that's because of the answer to the second question, which is that it's just way too fast to have consultation.

International Trade committee  —and the Government of B.C. wants to exempt private logs, which are under control of the tenured companies with which we compete. Okay, we'll skip some of this stuff, then. We basically have three options, and one is to ask you to have the tenured companies hand in all the renewable tenures and bid for the wood fibre.

International Trade committee  Thank you for inviting me here today. You're about to hear from a group that wants you to forget this deal and finish the litigation. I represent the Independent Lumber Remanufacturers Association in B.C., called the ILRA, but more accurately, I represent the non-tenured companies in B.C.