The message to Liberal MPs in all the letters, petitions, and meetings was the same “Wake up”.
The Progressive Conservative Party's support of the member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière was solid and very determined. We heard the NDP member for Acadie—Bathurst speak on behalf of his party, which also supported this initiative. It is not a question of party politics. It is a question of logic. It is a question of getting this industry up and running, or better yet of getting it afloat. It is literally a question of survival.
I have been through a shipyard closing. I remember it well. It was in Tracy. I think of the families, the human tragedy that was played out there, when between 1,500 and 2,000 employees lost their jobs.
This was done in the name of restructuring, so there would be a single shipyard in Quebec and some in the rest of Canada, that would have be able to get repair work, contracts and tax relief to enable them to get off the ground, become competitive and provide a living for many workers.
Instead the government has once again reneged. This is the Liberal Party personified. This is the double talk party, as I call it. During the election campaign in 1993 and in the red book, it clearly promised to give the Canadian shipping industry comparative and competitive advantages and to promote a consolidation of research and development activities in the area of shipping.
It said things during the election campaign that it forgot right after. It did that with the GST. It said it would scrap the GST and cancel the helicopter contract. After the campaign, it forgot all that. This is the double talk party. All the while, the workers are waiting. The industry is waiting for help to become competitive with the rest of the world.
People are not asking for anything special, just a little needed support such as they get in Europe, Asia or the United States. It is as simple as that, and the government keeps blocking its ears. But now there are surpluses. The government could revitalize this industry, but instead it is trying to get into areas of provincial jurisdiction rather than look after its own business, namely shipping, which is under federal jurisdiction.
What were the Liberal members doing throughout this debate led valiantly by the member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière? The Liberal members were absent. They were absent from committees, from consultations; they did not meet with workers or with the shipping industry. Some came, like the last speaker, and quoted statistics, trying to convince us that it would be better under provincial jurisdiction.
This is always going on. I appeal to the Liberal members from Quebec who said “We will defend the interests of Quebec”. Well, now is the time. The shipping industry has called for help, but they still say nothing. I wonder if a change of name would not be in order. Maybe we should call the Liberal Party the muffler party, since we hear nothing from them. The muffler party; that is it.
Since 1993 they could easily have implemented some measures gradually. But no; they give us statistics. They say that something has to be done. They quote production data from Asia and Japan, like they did earlier. They talk about shipbuilding statistics in the United States. But if the Americans build ships, it is because they get help from their government. It is because some tax measures were implemented to help them. Their shipbuilding industry became competitive because it received some support.
As I speak, for example, they need an extra ferry between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Do you know what the coast guard is doing? They stalled for so long that they are now looking all over the world for a second-hand ship instead of seizing that opportunity to help the Canadian shipbuilding industry.
Such situations are unthinkable and they happen year after year. We do not have to look far to find those who destroyed that industry. They are right here. Those famous measures were first implemented under the Liberal government in 1983; that government did not know where it was heading then and it was wiped off the political map in 1984. That government, the Liberal government of the day, was instrumental in the demise of the shipbuilding industry and, when it came to power again, it never implemented measures to rectify the situation it had created.
It is unacceptable for the government to promise the help it had promised in the red book, and now to hide behind statistics, saying yes, something should be done, we are going to think about it, a committee of the House might consider it. They say the same thing year in and year out. In the meantime, the hardworking Bloc member in this House, the member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, has been working on it.
He set about this task three or four years ago, bringing all the stakeholders together to conduct extensive studies, which now show that a sound shipbuilding industry in Quebec and Canada would yield major financial benefits within five or six years. In this way, the help given temporarily now would more than be compensated by tax revenues and economic benefits flowing from the building in our shipyards of ships ordered from all over the world.
The aerospace industry got some help. The farmers got some help, and rightly so. Why not support this important industry when we have two countries, Quebec and Canada, with the largest bodies of water in the world? Would it not be normal for us to build ships? No, this is something we do not think about. Yet it would be so logical.
I will conclude by asking the Liberal Party, the one in office, to accept to vote with the Bloc Quebecois, the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party and many members of the Reform Party so we can put aside party politics and say with one voice, “yes, we are going to work together to help the shipbuilding industry”.
I am asking them to hear the distress call coming from several regions. I heard this distress call in my riding and I know what it would be to have an industry that would create 1,500 or 2,000 jobs.
Let us stop the hemorrhage. This is something I have been saying in this House for 16 years and I wonder how it is that no Liberal member was ever able to take a leadership role like the Bloc member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière has done with the help of many colleagues from our party and from other parties, in a non partisan way.
I salute him again and I hope his call for help, his work and his bill will be favourably received by the governing party, the Liberal Party.