Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-411, introduced by the member for Terrebonne—Blainville. This is a very important bill to deal with what is really going on in the main areas affected.
The currently reality in the manufacturing sector cannot be ignored. Earlier, the Conservatives and the Liberals said that this was not a problem and that they would stay on the same course. To do so would mean ignoring the reality facing workers across Canada.
The NDP will be supporting this bill because we understand that there is a manufacturing crisis going on in this country right now.
I would like to preface my comments in English by quoting somebody who spoke in the House in regard to this very issue of dumping cheap imports and the loss of Canadian jobs that result. I will read it verbatim:
A Conservative government would stand up for Canadian workers and work proactively through international trade policies to ensure Canada competes on a level playing field.
That was said just before the last election in regard to protecting against the dumping of cheap imports and the loss of Canadian jobs that resulted. Who said that? It was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, the same individual who just a few minutes ago stood up in this House and said that we do not need to do this, that we have to review SIMA because it is difficult and complicated. Before the last election he was not saying that. He was saying exactly the contrary. He was saying that there is a crisis in manufacturing jobs, that there is a problem. It is important for the Canadian public to understand what the Conservatives said before the election and what they are saying now. He said, “A Conservative government would stand up for Canadian workers”.
I could not agree more with the comment from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade except that the new government is acting exactly like the old government. It is doing exactly the same thing as the Liberals did while jobs are hemorrhaging out of this country.
In the textile and clothing industry alone, 50,000 jobs have been lost in the last five years. That is why the Conservatives made that commitment. The situation is no better. In fact, it is worse.
For the Conservatives now to say that it is very complicated, as the Liberals said before, just shows that there is not a whole lot of difference between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party when it comes to governing. Perhaps that is why so many people, including those in Outremont, Quebec, are looking to the NDP, because we are actually in favour of taking action to protect Canadian jobs.
Fifty thousand jobs in the textile and clothing industry have been lost. I wear proudly my Canadian-made suit. I wonder how many members from the Conservative Party are wearing Canadian-made suits.
Let us look right across the country at the number of jobs that have been lost.
Between 2002 and 2007, nearly 300,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost. That means 300,000 families have lost a breadwinner, and the Conservatives say it is complicated and difficult and they cannot take any action. Those 300,000 families have lost a breadwinner because of the inaction of the Liberals and the inaction of the Conservatives.
We disagree when the government says it cannot take action and stop the dumping of imports. A framework has to be put into place. The government has to take action. A Liberal member said we should not tell government agencies how to do their job. Those agencies are not doing their job and that is the problem. That is why we have lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
What has been the result? Just two weeks ago we saw figures from Statistics Canada. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade knows these figures very well because I told him. I mentioned them at the international trade committee, not with any effect yet, but I am hoping to convince Conservatives that they cannot just keep doing things the way the Liberals did.
Since 1989, with the loss of those hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, two-thirds of Canadian families, 66% of Canadian families, have actually seen their real incomes go down, not up. They are actually earning less. We have seen overtime go up over one-third. Canadians are working longer hours. We have seen the debt load of the average Canadian family almost double.
Since 1989, since the signing of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, middle class families have actually lost one week of salary on average across the country. Lower middle class families have lost two weeks of salary. The poorest of Canadian families have seen their incomes collapse. They have lost six weeks of salary.
Canadian families are struggling more and more with less and less money in their pockets. Their real incomes have fallen for the exact reason that the good quality jobs are being washed away. Jobs are hemorrhaging out of this country and neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have been willing to do even one thing to take action to address this crucial issue.
We are talking about Quebec, we are talking about Ontario, we are talking about British Columbia and other provinces across the country where this hemorrhaging of good jobs has led to a fall in real incomes for most Canadian families. Why would a government not then say that very clearly we have an income crisis and a job crisis when it comes to quality jobs? People are working part time and in temporary jobs. They are trying to make ends meet that way. We have a prosperity gulf, an income crisis in this country and yet the Conservatives continue to say that we simply cannot do anything to address this issue.
I come back to Bill C-411. Essentially the bill puts into place some additional mechanisms to ensure that we have protection against the dumping of cheap imports. If we look at the criteria, it is quite clear that these are market driven definitions.
The NDP is very clear that there are some areas that should not be in the market at all. We believe in public health care and reinforcing our public health care system. We believe very strongly in that. That is why we have the quality of public health care that we have today in Canada. It is because of Tommy Douglas and because of the work of the NDP. Without the NDP, we would have no public health care in this country, and like the U.S., we would be spending twice as much per capita for a system that would leave millions of Canadians with absolutely no health care protection whatsoever.
We believe there are areas that need to be protected by the public sector, but we also believe that there is a role for the private sector. When there are market driven mechanisms for certain private sector instruments, we support the market. Yet the Conservatives and Liberals are saying that they do not support those market mechanisms, that somehow they cannot provide market based definitions for the dumping of cheap imports.
We have an anomaly here. The NDP is standing up defending the market and Canadian jobs and the Conservatives and Liberals are saying, “No, we cannot have market based definitions to protect Canada against dumping”. They are of one mind. We have seen this with the throne speech. The Conservatives and Liberals sound alike and they think alike. They do the same things and essentially in both cases they are refusing to apply market based mechanisms to ensure that we are protecting Canadian jobs against the dumping that is taking place.
Here is the paradox. We have a manufacturing job crisis. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. We have an income crisis. Most Canadian families, two-thirds of those that are watching us tonight, have actually seen their real incomes fall since 1989, since the signing of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. CanWest Global may disagree, but that is the reality which Statistics Canada tells us about. Most Canadian families have seen their incomes fall and yet the Conservatives and Liberals want to do their favourite action, their favourite remedy, which is to do nothing.
We in this corner of the House in the NDP, in our growing caucus, believe we have to do something and we have to apply these market based mechanisms as defined in Bill C-411 to protect Canadian jobs, Canadian workers and Canadian communities. That is why we are supporting this legislation.