Mr. Speaker, I add my voice to the voices of concern we are hearing from all sides of the House tonight on the future of the lumber industry in Canada.
I grew up in this industry. I was a member of a fairly successful small to medium size business with my two brothers. I made my livelihood in the lumber industry as did my father before me and as do tens of thousands of people in British Columbia who look to the logging industry for their bread and butter.
Lumber exports as well as the jobs that come with them are still the most valuable export product in the entire country. It is the number one industry. The reaction from the government in the last few days that it is doing all it can and that we must be patient is just not cutting it.
It is an industry that has been on the ropes for a number of reasons such as loss of habitat, loss of working forests in different areas, loss of access because of aboriginal land claims, and on it goes. However this is the cruellest blow of all.
On the British Columbia coast alone 21 of 35 mills have shut down with a loss of 12,500 jobs. That is just on the coast. It is being said that 30,000 more jobs are at risk. The Independent Canadian Lumber Remanufacturers warned on the weekend:
The duties are up to a level we've not seen before. Most of my members called me and they're not sure how they'll survive the next 45 or so days.
John Allan, president of the B.C. Lumber Trade Council, said in the Vancouver Sun of November 1:
Thousands of jobs have been lost and thousands more will be lost unless our nations find a way to resolve this dispute once and for all.
On October 15 West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. said it would temporarily shut down all its Canadian mills for two weeks. This would include six operations in British Columbia and two in Alberta. The move will affect about 1,400 workers.
Carrier Lumber Ltd. said it would cut back production at its Prince George sawmills by reducing the number of shifts from two to one. Thousands of forestry workers have been laid off already in British Columbia.
On September 25 Weyerhaeuser Canada Ltd. announced the closure of three of its B.C. mills affecting nearly 1,000 workers in Port Alberni, Vancouver and Nanaimo.
These are good, well paying jobs. They are the kinds of jobs on which one can raise a family. When we say 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000 jobs, we are not talking about part time jobs, jobs for pin money or jobs for money to buy some extra Christmas presents. These jobs put bread and butter on the table of 50,000 families, the majority of which are in British Columbia.
The response we get from the Liberal government in the House is that there is a special envoy. A special envoy is not the answer and will not help. When we ask about the possibility of a stakeholders meeting the Liberals say it will not work. When we ask if the Prime Minister will get on a plane and go to Washington they say it will not work.
We asked about the possibility of a meeting of the first ministers or the forestry ministers from across the country. We could get them all together to talk about a Canadian position. The Liberals say that will not work. According to the Liberals, nothing will work. They say that we will hope for the best. We will go to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and hope for the best. That will not take place until next spring and then it is a two year process.
Every time we come forward with an idea, a plan or a suggestion, the Liberals tell us not to worry because we cannot do any of those things and all we can do is hope.
The Prime Minister said today in the House that when he was in Shanghai he turned to the president during a photo op and said to him that this was a real concern. The president answered “Yes, I heard that. Let us smile for the camera”. That is not good enough. That is not a good enough response for the number one export industry in Canada.
If this were just a one off deal we could say that the government was ignoring it. It does not understand the industry or it does not want to listen to the industry and its leaders. It does not want to listen to the forest minister from British Columbia who was here today and with whom I had a meeting. It just does not want to listen because it is obstinate or something.
It is part of a trend by the government that it does not have a plan on hardly any issues. The House has shut down four times in the last two weeks because there was no legislation in front of this place. It does not have enough legislation to keep the doors open around here. It does not have a plan on hardly anything.
It does not have a plan on perimeter security. When it does not have a plan it is doomed to be ruled by those who have a plan. That is why we begged last week to talk about perimeter security. The government says that it is just too big a job, that it cannot deal with it or come up with a plan. It is dooming us to react to the American plan again.
When the special envoy comes up here on softwood lumber, guess what? He comes up with a plan, an American plan looking after the American interests, the American industry and the American border states. The government's response is to sit here and claim that it does not know. It asks the Americans to tell us what they think and then reacts to it.
Last week we came up with a plan on dealing with perimeter security. We said that it was not good enough to sit back and hope for the best. We need to come forward with a plan and put it before the Americans. It worked on free trade when we put one forward. That was not an American plan; it was a Canadian plan. It worked on the International Joint Commission. It was a Canadian plan sold to the Americans. It worked on the acid rain treaty. It was made in Canada and sold to the Americans.
It will work again but we need a plan. The plan that says that it will sit back here, wait for the envoy to come and hope for the best is not a plan. That is capitulation. That is a recipe for disaster. It is a recipe for a two year waiting list of 50,000 families who will not have anything to put on the table let alone underneath the Christmas tree. That is not good enough from the government and it is not good enough for Canadians. What is with the government?
Let us pick our favourite issue or the least favourite one. In this case it is the softwood lumber agreement, but whatever issue we pick in each case it is reactive. In each case it is playing catch up. Whether it is reacting to the September 11 crisis, whether it is a failure to develop a perimeter security issue, whether it is a failure to deal with the border crisis evolving around our just in time industries and many other industries that say they cannot get proper and timely access to the Americans, or whether it is the lumber issue we are dealing with tonight, in each case we are told not to worry, to be happy, to go home and hope for the best.
That is not good enough. It is not good enough for my province. It is not good enough for the industry that I came from where people have put their economic lives on the line. They have put an entire province on the line, a province that is just hanging in the balance when it comes to its economic viability.
Instead we are told by the government not to worry, to let it go to the WTO, to take our chances, and a couple or three years from now we will know what are the results. In the meantime we can have 80% unemployment in the industry. We can have no income to look after health care or education needs, the basic needs for which a province like ours and other provinces across the country rely on taxable income from the lumber industry.
It is our number one industry. It should seize the government like the September 11 issue should seize the government. It should be on par with it. It is about economic security. It is about job security. It is about the future of an industry that does not see much of a future right now. It is about a quality of life and a standard of living that Canadians have a right to expect. They have a right to expect the government to get off its hind legs, get into this game, get down to Washington State, sit there, pound on a desk and give our case aggressively until Canadian interests are looked after.
It is time the government got at it. It has not done it. I am urging and begging it on behalf of British Columbians to get at it and get into the game.