It's the same with Norway. Their shipbuilding industry was heavily subsidized for years and years and years, until it got to the point where Norway can now negotiate free trade agreements and say they are not going to subsidize their industry anymore, because it's self-sustaining. It will sustain itself through the subsidies that it's already enjoyed over the last 20 years.
I think it was in 1995 that we did the report on shipbuilding and asked Canada to put in place the measures that Mr. McArthur mentioned and to give us a real shipbuilding policy we could sink our teeth into, so that when we entered into free trade agreements like the EFTA agreement with Norway, which we are talking about now, we would at least be on a level playing field.
We're not against fair trade; we're against free trade, because we're giving Canada away. But we're not against fair trade, as a union. We believe that with the subsidies Norway has enjoyed—and I'll repeat this again—over the past 15 to 20 years, there is no way, even with the 15- or 20-year phase-out, that we can catch up to them in technology, infrastructure, and so on and so forth, because we're pouring nothing into it. It is like pouring water into a cup with no bottom; it just goes nowhere, but straight out the other end.
The other thing with the World Trade Organization, and the free trade agreements with some of the other countries like Korea, is that while they say they don't subsidize their industry, their workers are in fact direct subsidies to their industries, because of the lack of safety standards and because their wages are so low. When you're working in the Halifax Shipyard, you make $24 an hour, and you have medical benefits, and the company pays compensation rates, and we pay our income tax to the government. And then you go to Korea, and the guy working on the ship is working in a pair of sandals, not steel-toed work boots, because there are no safety laws, and he gets $10 a month whereas we get $25 an hour. Their workers are a direct subsidy to their shipbuilding industry, without the government even tapping into what they are doing.