Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have seen the crisis in the forestry sector. It's all around me in my riding: the crisis of lost jobs, lost opportunities in communities, and lost opportunities for individuals over many years. This crisis has been going on for a number of years. One of the little towns that I used to live in almost became a ghost town. You could buy a house in that town with your credit card a number of years ago because of the mill shutdown. So I have seen this crisis growing, and it hasn't stopped.
This crisis has been exacerbated by the softwood lumber sellout that we had last year. When was that signed, April 2006? Raw log exports have increased. That's why I put a motion forward to curtail raw log exports and increase incentives for value-added manufacturing in Canada, instead of shipping our logs out and having them manufactured outside this country and sent back so we can buy the lumber. The irony is not lost on the people in my riding, Vancouver Island North, when they have to buy lumber at their local store that is made in the U.S. or somewhere else, while they see the trees cut down right in their own communities.
I have to disagree with some of the comments made by Mr. Harris. I don't see this as a subsidy for the forest industry. Where it talks about forestry and manufacturing sectors, I take “sector” to mean all parts of that. A sector is a sector. We're talking about an aid package for communities, for workers and for the diversification of communities. We want to see that diversification now. We want to see job training now. There is no need to wait for the budget for this to happen. We know there is going to be another huge surplus, and we can use some of that money. We're not even asking for very much at $1 billion. I would hope it is more. For $1 billion to do for the whole of Canada, with all of the communities that are affected, it would have to be spread pretty thin.
The government can put in a ways and means motion or a bill to do this now. There is no reason to wait. We didn't wait for the big banks and big oil companies to receive subsidies, if you want to call it that, in the fall. I don't know why we have to make workers who are struggling wait several more months for a budget.
The community development trust is not a done deal. It's not in place. It's contingent on a budget. It's only been agreed to by one premier, as far as I know. It hasn't even been negotiated with all of the other provinces, so it is not a done deal. It is not in place.
Let me go back to why we are in this crisis. There was money in the past, the softwood money from 2004, that came out. A number of communities in my riding were looking forward to some of that money, but they got very little. It didn't get to the workers. I still have people telling me that they didn't benefit at all from that package. They are very concerned that this $1 billion that was announced is not going to get to them either. They are saying they want this money to start flowing now, and it needs to go to communities for economic diversification.
They may be in the forestry sector, but they are not the industry, and we need to make sure those communities can survive. People have built their livelihoods around them, and we need to make sure that the workers in those communities can get the retraining that can help them move ahead into other industries if the forest industry doesn't come back in those areas.
The other thing is that I don't think it has any effect on the study we're going to do on the forestry sector. I think this needs to happen and should have happened a few years ago.
In the forestry study, we're going to be looking at what's happened and what kind of policies are in place, I would hope, in some cases. We'll look at a whole lot of things. One of them, I would imagine, would be forest policy and maybe some recommendations about how we can change the policies that aren't working or improve them so that they work better, so that we don't end up in these crises.
I would hope this motion gets support and that we can start this money flowing to communities and workers for their benefit and to alleviate some of the crises these people are finding themselves in.