International Trade committee  Obviously, we'd need a legislative change giving us that status. I'm sure you can attest to the fact we work hand in hand with the companies, the Canadian Steel Producers Association—which I understand will be testifying later. We recognize the importance of these particular jobs.

International Trade committee  It surely hasn't had any impact on our members. As a matter of fact, our members are struggling quite significantly. The fact is that forestry is not something new to any government. There have been numerous governments before. We've been successful before the WTO, where we've won every single case.

International Trade committee  Maybe Mark can answer that. He deals with the trades.

International Trade committee  Just on the value added, that's an issue we have been raising for years and years. We've been ringing that bell. The fact is you continue to cut the logs. You float them up the river. You load them onto a ship. You send them over to Asia, and they come back maybe as this furniture that we're currently sitting at.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and committee, for the invitation to speak with you here today. I'm here as the national director of the United Steelworkers. I am representing the hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers who are members of our international union. Across North America, we represent more than 800,000 men and women who work in every sector of the Canadian and U.S. economies, many of whom work in trade-exposed industries.

Finance committee  First of all, we don't have the right to actually file. We just now have the right to have standing. Therefore, once the employer decides to file a complaint, we then get notification in regard to what the product...and all this other stuff. We really don't participate from the beginning.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I alluded to it a bit. The fact is, we have lobbied quite extensively the government of the day to try to make some amendments so that we would have the same access as our union. As they know, we're an international union. We participate and work with the steel industry, the aluminum industry, the rubber tire industry, whichever.

Finance committee  Other than the U.S. steel and some of those things, we got off to a rocky start. When it comes to maintaining the jobs and investment, I think that we go hand in hand with the employers to make sure we have a vibrant industry, and the fact is that communities basically depend on that.

Finance committee  I always use this example. You have China, which produces 1.2 billion tonnes of steel. It consumes roughly 800 million tonnes. I always tell people that if anybody thinks they're going to take that excess capacity of 300 million tonnes and put it in their boneyard for the next order, it ain't going to happen.

Finance committee  China has a lot of producers. They're all subsidized and they don't play by the rules. That's the issue. The fact is that they want to get rid of their steel in order to get some currency. That's the difficulty. As I said earlier, this has been a global problem for some time. This is where the major players—the United States, Mexico, Canada, the European Union and all those folks that play by the rules—need to come together.

Finance committee  I can answer that. On the jobs situation, as I said earlier, I think that a lot of the employers were very concerned in regards to what was coming down the pipe. You know, the deal finally came together fairly quickly. It was kind of a thing where all of a sudden we got up, and within hours we got the thing to come together.

Finance committee  I think that Catherine covers the point. As I said earlier, the fact is that it's all about timing. When the government imposed the sanctions, it stabilized the industry. By the time the hearings were held.... Really, it's all about timing. I think that it's for that reason that somehow the CITT didn't see what was necessary at that particular point.

Finance committee  Look, be it two years or three years—and we probably have not talked about it—this dumping problem didn't start last year or the year before. This has been a problem for many years. Unfortunately, we haven't had the mechanism, to a large degree, in Canada, to deal with it as quickly or as efficiently as we possibly could.

Finance committee  I think BillC-101 sends a message that the government is prepared to stand up and basically defend. We support that. As I've said in my submission, our view is that they should also continue with the five products that they haven't imposed. To me, this is a bigger picture. We'd better be cognizant of the fact that we have international companies that operate around the world.

Finance committee  Your first question was with regard to why they didn't.... I mean, it's really all about timing. There's no doubt about it.