Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As has been said before, the spirit is noble, but there are three main issues I have with the motion.
My riding in New Brunswick is dominated by forestry and agriculture. The upper county--Victoria County--is predominantly forestry on the whole eastern side, and York County and Carleton County are dominated by forestry. However, in Atlantic Canada we've also had the opportunity to have an Atlantic exemption as part of the softwood lumber deal, and it's because a lot of our wood comes from private land. This traditional exemption has been very valued by our forest industry. Any attempt to subsidize that would be a significant problem in Atlantic Canada.
Also, this motion talks about this crisis rocking the forestry sector and states that “the Committee recommend that the government introduce as soon as possible an improved aid package for the forestry and manufacturing sectors”. Manufacturing, Mr. Chair, should be left out of this, really. It is much more of an industry responsibility and is much broader.
If we're going after the forestry side of this, and I echo Mr. Boshcoff's concerns.... It is the targeting of this. This motion is not even targeted, from a forestry standpoint.
Then it talks about manufacturing. It gets down to the relative size of the forest industry. Well, if you're talking manufacturing, you're starting to mix apples with oranges. As well, does the relative size mean geographically, or does it mean the impact on the economy of these regions?
I find, in this situation, that it's an industry responsibility for that side, and it's very broad. From a forestry perspective, a significant amount of responsibility for the forestry industry lies with the province. When it comes to issues like electricity prices, which is a main issue New Brunswick is battling with right now, with wood supply....
I can talk about a situation right now in my riding . We're on the verge of reopening a mill, and we can't get wood. It's a challenge to get wood. And wood supply is a provincial responsibility. It would have put 30-some people back to work. So those are challenges that I think we're sharing with the provinces.
While the motion is directionally where we want to go, we've already put the $1 billion community development trust out there. Recognizing that it is a joint provincial and federal responsibility, with most of it being a provincial responsibility, shouldn't we be looking at the study in terms of where each of the areas should play a role? We could get a better handle on knowing what an aid package would be so that, first, we don't contravene provincial responsibility, and second, we ensure that we don't get ourselves into a trade issue with the U.S. on our softwood lumber deal.
Mr. Chair, for those reasons, I would be very concerned. We do have the billion dollars out there now. It's aid to communities. But I think it would be much better to quickly get a study done and determine the right thing to do, versus putting a motion out there when we don't even know what the right thing to do is.
Thank you.