Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to rise today in the House of Commons to speak on behalf of the New Democratic Party in today's debate on the softwood lumber industry. It is about time we had this debate because this issue has been dragging for far too long and I am sure my colleagues here in the opposition feel the same way.
I recognize that since our return on September 17 the House has been charged with a number of issues related to the terrorist attacks. I would like to acknowledge the co-operation of all parties to ensure that this debate took place before we take our Thanksgiving week break.
My NDP colleagues and I began raising this issue in the House of Commons last March when it became clear that we were heading into yet another softwood lumber dispute with the United States. At that time I was thinking, here we go again. Why do we always end up in these situations vis-à-vis the United States?
Having recently been appointed the NDP industry critic, I started looking into the matter back in March. Since then I have had the opportunity to meet with many people involved in the industry, from the unions that represent the workers in the industry to the representatives of the lumber companies that operate in the different regions of our country. That is an important thing to note. The softwood lumber industry is a national industry, but the way it is managed and runs differs from region to region. That is why it is important to listen to people from all the regions to get the proper national perspective.
In addition to my one on one meetings, I also had the opportunity to take part in some very good committee meetings on the subject. I have learned a lot about the softwood lumber industry over the past months. I have come a long way toward answering that question I was asking myself back in March, why do we keep ending up in these lumber wars with the U.S.?
The bottom line is that the U.S. is prepared to do almost anything to keep Canadian lumber from capturing more than 30% of the U.S. market. Anytime we do that, and it happens because we have a stronger, more competitive industry than it does, the powerful American lumber companies and U.S. lumber unions take their clout to Washington and the U.S. government starts these trade wars.
Each time the Americans start one of these wars, it ends up getting resolved by a temporary agreement or treaty. The last time was in 1996 when Canada and the U.S. signed a five year softwood lumber agreement, a five year ceasefire. The treaty expired in March 2001 and the U.S. went into its protectionist mode by imposing the 19% tariff on most Canadian lumber. Because of these tariffs, 15,000 lumber workers have lost their jobs since April. We have to stop this situation now.
A lot of people wonder how the U.S. can get away with putting these tariffs on Canadian lumber when we are supposed to have free trade. The North American Free Trade Agreement is supposed to guarantee the free movement of goods and trade between our two countries. This shows how weak and ineffective the NAFTA regime is. Whenever we in the NDP criticize NAFTA for these kinds of shortcomings our political opponents put on their smokescreens and say “You New Democrats just oppose open trade”. Well it is not true. We want open trade with our friends and neighbours in the United States.
The problem is that NAFTA is not good enough. It is supposed to protect us from unilateral protectionist actions by the U.S. and it does not. To prove it, look no further than the softwood lumber industry and the 19% tariff that the U.S. is now putting on Canadian softwood lumber.
I am not the only one who thinks this way. Allow me to quote the president and chief executive officer of the Maritime Lumber Bureau, Ms. Diana Blenkhorn, who told the House of Commons Sub-committee on International Trade, Trade Disputes and Investment that, “The history of NAFTA to date, relative to softwood lumber, shows it has not done the job, quite frankly”.
Here is a quote from the same meeting with Mr. David Emerson, co-chair of the Canadian Lumber Trade Alliance. Mr. Emerson told the committee: “We do not have any faith in the trade litigation framework that exists today because it has been designed by the Americans, for American producers, to be as punitive as it possibly can be”.
NAFTA has not done the job. That is why we have never reached a final, permanent resolution to this issue. Instead we have gone from short term agreement to short term agreement with periods of trade wars and tariffs in between. The last thing we need now is another short term band-aid solution. What we need is a long term solution to provide stability for the industry and the people who rely on forestry for their employment.
Again, I am not the only one who thinks we need a long term solution to break out of this cycle of trade wars. All the business leaders and unions representing forest workers that I have heard from are saying the same thing. I would like to quote Mr. Haggard, president of the Industrial Wood and Allied Workers of Canada Union. This is Canada's largest forest union.
Mr. Haggard told the committee that his union and the forest workers he represents were prepared to live with the short term pain of the current tariffs for up to two years if the federal government used the time to craft a real long term solution so that this would be the last time we have to go through this process.
The unions and business agreed that the solution was open trade with the U.S. The forest industry and unions told us they were prepared to ride out the storm a little longer if we could secure a permanent end to the bullying U.S. protectionist measures rather than another short term band-aid solution.
However the problem is that the Liberal government is not doing that. It should be standing up for Canadian jobs and industry, and instead it knuckles under to the U.S. There is so much it could be doing to help Canadian forest workers and to protect jobs but it is not doing any of it.
Where is the income assistance plan for the 15,000 people who have been laid off? We in the NDP called for that two months ago and we have not heard a peep from the Liberal government. Where are the measures to stop the export of raw logs to the U.S.? Exporting raw logs rather than processing them in Canada is like the export of jobs. We have been calling on the Liberal government for years to help keep these jobs in Canada.
It should be working with industry to develop our processing capacity so that we could export more finished wood products instead of raw logs and keep the processing jobs in Canada where they belong.
We need the federal government to stand up for Canada's right to manage our forests in an environmentally sustainable way. In our federal system conserving and managing forests is a provincial responsibility. In Manitoba most forestry takes place on provincial crown land and each year the province sets quotas for the lumber companies. In that way the provincial government is able to balance the needs of industry with the imperative that we sustain our forests and our environment.
However the maritime provinces manage their forests differently than Manitoba. In New Brunswick, for example, most of the forests are privately owned and not on crown land.
I prefer Manitoba's way of doing it because it is more environmentally friendly, but I recognize this is a decentralized federation. Each province is different and has the right to chart its own course in areas of provincial jurisdiction.
The U.S. has been saying that it likes the way some provinces manage their forests but not others. It wants to force us to change the way we manage our forests to the least environmentally sustainable model. It calls the crown land model used by Manitoba and other provinces to protect the environment an unfair subsidy.
This is unacceptable and the federal government needs to stand up to the U.S. and say that it is not a subsidy. It is environmental management and the U.S. has no business interfering in our federal-provincial division of powers.
The NDP wants to see open trade with the U.S. without compromising our right to manage and preserve our forests for future generations. We need sustainable forest management to maintain jobs now and in the future so that there will always be enough trees for future generations to harvest. We need fair and open access to the U.S. market through effective and balanced trade deals, not unbalanced trade deals like the one we have now.