Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Davenport.
Today's motion is very important. I am glad that it has been brought forth to the House. The motion indicates: “That, in the opinion of the House, the government should immediately establish a series of measures to help the manufacturing and forestry sectors hard hit by the rising dollar and increased competition”.
However, I feel the motion fails to address the government's inaction and its flawed policies. I will speak to those two specific issues in my remarks.
If we look at the fact that the government has taken no action to address how to promote productivity and competitiveness, it is clearly apparent that it has ignored the recommendations made by the industry committee, which made 22 key recommendations focusing on productivity and competitiveness. The government has no real and comprehensive plan in place.
It is our party, under our leadership, which has demonstrated to the Canadian public that, going forward, Canada as a trading nation needs to be more competitive and needs to have a productivity agenda. We need to make sure we can compete in a North American environment and with an emerging Asian economy and other established unions and economies.
Let us look at the government's flawed policies. Especially, let us examine forestry. I have had the opportunity to travel the country and visit many sectors impacted by forestry. Many industries, families, workers, people and companies have been directly impacted by the flawed softwood lumber agreement signed by the Conservative government.
We have, for example, the current environment, with a strong Canadian dollar that is on the rise. We also have a decline in the softwood lumber price and a decline in the demand for forestry products and softwood lumber products because of a slowdown in the U.S. housing market. What did the government do? It signed a flawed deal that effectively forced companies to pay higher taxes and also to make sure that they were a part of and subject to quotas.
More importantly, there is another issue that has not been addressed. That is the pine beetle infestation. Here is what bothers me after all of this, after we gave up a billion dollars and a broken promise from the Conservative government: it promised it would collect the duties but it only collected 80¢ on the dollar. We basically undermined all our NAFTA and WTO rulings. What did we get in return? As I said, we got higher taxes and quotas. We are back in the courts after seven months of a seven year deal and, most importantly and what Canadians need to realize, we have compromised our sovereignty.
As a nation, the government has no authority and now no ability to work with the forestry sector. Any time it takes that upon itself, if it chooses to do so, it will be sued by the United States and by the U.S. softwood lumber coalition. It is an example of a clear-cut flawed policy with respect to forestry.
The government also has a very wrong-headed approach when it comes to manufacturing. I will speak to a specific example with respect to the South Korea free trade agreement. The minister has indicated that he wants to rush this deal through. He wants to champion this issue very quickly. I have been given absolutely no reason to understand why this is the case. Let us look at the sheer merits of the deal.
We currently have a trade deficit with South Korea. South Korea has a very protectionist culture. If we look at the 1995 and 1998 memoranda of understanding with South Korea and the United States, we see that it has completely gone back on its word. Let us take the auto sector, where there is a large disparity. South Korea sells 400 cars in our market versus the one vehicle we sell in its market and has imports as only 2% of the car market in South Korea.
The Liberal Party has been absolutely clear on this. Throughout the summer, our leader toured Ontario. He visited many cities and toured many manufacturing facilities. He talked to many people in the auto sector and, more importantly, to companies that rely on the auto sector. He came to the conclusion that we will not support any flawed South Korea free trade agreement. We want to make sure that non-tariff barriers are addressed. We want to make sure there is a proper dispute mechanism in place. What bothers me about the government is that we are here trying to defend Canada and Canadian interests and trying to put forward a clear-cut productivity and competitiveness agenda.
This is what the Minister of International Trade had to say:
The fact that we haven't sold many, if any, vehicles into Korea is probably more to do with the fact that North American auto producers have really not produced the kind of small, fuel-efficient high-quality vehicles that are in demand in Korea.
I would like to ask the minister to take the opportunity to visit these facilities. I find such a remark very discouraging and disappointing because it undermines our hard-working Canadians. The minister should tell that to the people at the Chrysler plant in Brampton where 1,100 people lost their jobs. What is more important to realize is that not only did those people lose their jobs but it affected their families, and the companies that rely on that large auto assembly plant. This is absolutely discouraging and it needs to be addressed.
These are some of the salient points that were not mentioned in the motion.
The Conservative government has developed no comprehensive action plan. The government really has a flawed policy when it comes to forestry and manufacturing. An example would be the softwood lumber agreement, and I highlighted some of the concerns with that. The other issue is the South Korea free trade agreement.
In my opinion, what is even more troubling is the Conservative government's track record of being counter-productive when it comes to improving our manufacturing sector abroad. We are a trading nation. We need to make sure we have open and accessible markets abroad. What does the government do? It closes key consulate offices in key markets in Japan and Milan, for example. These are areas where we need to make sure that we have a presence, where we can sell our products, and where we can brand Canada.
The government has cut and cancelled many programs. One of the initiatives was the Canada trade program, which was a very important comprehensive package that dealt with small and medium sized enterprises to look and examine ways where we could make our companies competitive, where we could make sure that we exposed our manufacturing above and beyond the North American borders abroad, and we could make sure that we retained good, high quality paying Canadian jobs.
This really is troublesome if we look at the overall job market situation. For example, let us look at forestry. Roughly 300,000 jobs are directly impacted by the forestry industry. These jobs are in decline on a daily basis. We have close to 550,000 jobs in the auto manufacturing sector, for example. Most important, there are about 7.5 spin-off jobs. For every one job that we lose, we lose 7.5 jobs. Those are thousands of jobs.
I visited some communities that totally and absolutely rely on a mill because it is very much integrated into the forestry sector. Some towns, for example, Windsor, Brampton, and many places in southwestern Ontario, rely heavily on manufacturing. For every one job that they lose, approximately 8 spin-off jobs are lost.
These job losses are going to devastate these communities. This is going to devastate hard-working families. This is going to devastate the local economy. The government has turned its head the other way. If anything, it is going to accelerate the process by signing a flawed South Korea free trade agreement. More important, the government has completely tied its hands with respect to the softwood lumber agreement.
We have completely compromised our sovereignty. What bothers me is that Canadians have elected this minority Parliament and this particular make up to ensure that this Parliament works to protect and preserve good paying Canadian jobs, not to compromise our sovereignty.
I think it is absolutely disheartening and disappointing to see the Conservative government ignore these two vital industries that employ thousands of people, that help generate thousands of jobs, and that help generate millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, in tax revenue.
At the end of the day the issue is about trust. This motion speaks to the fact that Canadians cannot trust the government to protect good paying Canadian jobs. People in this country cannot trust the Conservative government to fight for our sovereignty and to protect our sovereignty. The government is absolutely out of the game when it comes to forestry. It cannot do anything. Anytime it takes an action to help the forestry sector, it will be sued. That is the kind of policy the government has developed. It is trying to appease our neighbours to the south and in doing so we are going to lose thousands of jobs.
Both industries are in crisis and this motion speaks to that today. I hope the government is listening to this and will take action.