Yes, except us. The old OECD agreement was entered into by this country. All countries that built ships entered into it many years ago. The only country adhering to it is which one? Canada. We are the only country adhering to it. That is why we cannot compete. None of the others are adhering to it.
Yes, we hear that the Liberals will be going to the WTO meetings down in Seattle and that this will be a priority. We have heard all that rhetoric before. They do not have to go to the WTO. They can come in here this week and bring in a national shipbuilding policy. There is absolutely no reason in the world for our men and our women who built frigates, which are the best ships to be found anywhere in the world, to have to wait until they go to the WTO.
European countries are so concerned right now with what has been happening with the dollars from the IMF supporting Asian shipyards that they have initiated a court action against the Daewoo shipyard. This Korean shipyard is over $350 million in the red, continues to take orders and build ships below cost and, we have been told, allegedly uses some IMF money which includes Canadian tax dollars.
We need a shipbuilding policy with provisions for an improved export financing and loan guarantee program similar to the title 11 program in the United States. Yes, it took over our sugar refinery. It is taking over our shipbuilding. It is taking over everything, and we are sitting back and letting it happen here in Canada.
There should be an exclusion of the newly constructed ships built in Canadian shipyards from the present Revenue Canada leasing regulations, provisions for a refundable tax credit to Canadian shipowners or shipbuilders that contract to build a ship or contract for conversions with change of mission, mid-life refit or major refit in Canadian shipyards.
We have to say that there should be an elimination of the one sided aspect of NAFTA which allows the U.S. to sell new or used ships duty free in Canada yet absolutely prohibits Canadian access to the U.S. market.
Our newly appointed industry minister in 1993 was given a gloomy report from Ernst & Young on the future of shipbuilding in Canada. The report entitled “International Competitiveness of the Canadian Shipbuilding Industry” was commissioned by the previous Tory government and concluded that the industry was in very serious trouble. That was 1993, and this minister and this Liberal government have done nothing to make Canadian shipbuilding competitive with the international shipbuilding sector in countries that subsidize their shipbuilding.
That 119 page report stated that if the government did nothing to help the industry become more competitive, an estimated 15,000 jobs would be lost by the turn of the century. We only have a month to go. I beg my colleagues over there to take a serious look at what is happening. There are about 25,000 people, some of whom are on welfare and some of whom had to go to the United States to find work.
People have come up from Louisiana to Saint John, New Brunswick, to interview our shipyard workers and said they were the best trained people they have ever interviewed. They offered them jobs down in the United States. We have the most modern shipyards in Quebec, back home in Saint John, New Brunswick, in Newfoundland and right through to Vancouver, and what happens? We have a government that does not care.
I plead tonight like never before for the government to put our people back to work. Let them have their dignity. Let them feed their families. They do not want to be on welfare. They do not want to be on unemployment. We can do that by working together and getting a national shipbuilding policy which makes us competitive.