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 compan

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 ren

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  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

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 ha

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  We thank you for having the Independent Lumber Remanufacturers Association back again so soon and for taking a second look at this proposed softwood lumber agreement. We're also very pleased to see the National Association of Home Builders here today, and we thank them for supp

International Trade committee  I don't remember all the permutations and combinations, but basically, the variables are the random length index, where it is, and levels of shipments being above or below the 110. What those variables are will determine the tax level or the quota level and whether there's any ad

International Trade committee  Well, there are eight possible tax rates, depending upon the random length index and whether you're above or below the 110. Three of those are involved in the quota, that being the 2.5%, the 3%, and the 5%. On the quota, it can either be 34, 32, or 30. I guess there are actually

International Trade committee  No.

International Trade committee  Yes, absolutely, for sure. We wish we were making 15% or 22.5% on the product so we could give it to the government, but we're not. Even under the $500 cap, we just don't have $75 to hand to the government, or $112.50 if we were under the retroactive penalty. We can't price our p

Industry committee  It should be under ten. I'll just read this and then have the questions. I thank you for inviting the Independent Lumber Remanufacturers' Association, which I will refer to as the ILRA, to appear before your committee. Our 120 member companies represent the majority of British C

Industry committee  No. I would say that we have not been consulted to the extent that we wanted to be consulted, either federally or provincially. Like I say, we're the small, non-tenured guys. I don't even know if the remanufacturers were on the map until five or six years ago. People are aware of

Industry committee  Yes, we're going to be far worse off. We took our first hit under the softwood lumber agreement of 1996, when there was quota, and our quota was insufficient. But at least at that time, if you had more shipments to make, you could pay 2.5% or $50 a thousand. You'd get 2.5%, then

Industry committee  This has not occurred, and we ask you to recommend that the House follow through on this motion before passing Bill C-24.