Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight in what is more of a discussion than a debate. I am not what we would call a happy camper. As the hon. member for Prince George--Bulkley Valley stated in his speech, as did other members in the House, the government was warned for a long time that this crisis was about to happen.
I would like everyone in the House and those who are listening to be assured that not all the Americans are on board with what a small band of special interest people is doing down there, not by a long stretch. As a matter of fact, the majority of American people are against exactly what is taking place here. Not only is it creating havoc in this country, it is creating havoc in the United States.
When the softwood agreement expired, the government acted as if it was a revelation that this would hamper our industry and create problems. Let me take members back. This dispute has been going on since 1962. Time and time again the Americans have challenged us and time and time again we have beaten them at the WTO in regard to these duties. It is not as if the government members could stand here tonight, and I have heard them, and say in all innocence that they should not have any concerns on this. They should have. History repeats itself until we do something right.
We went into the softwood lumber agreement with basically a five year understanding to get this worked out. When we stood up in the House and stated the concerns we had in regard to softwood lumber, I remember the minister saying it would give us five years of stability in the industry. That is what the minister said. The minister said that it would give us time to work on it.
There was no work done and now there is no work for our loggers or for those who depend on the logging industry, because the government refused to do absolutely anything. It treated it as a non-issue.
I would like to quote something from a gentleman whom I kind of agree with. David Emerson, the president of Vancouver based Canfor Corp., said:
If this was the auto industry or if this was Bombardier or the aerospace business or if it was split-run magazines, we'd have had high-level emissaries flying back and forth daily and it probably would have been resolved by now.
He is right. We have seen that happen in the House.
I will step away from probably the party and everything else because I really have a problem with free trade. The problem is that when we went into NAFTA and we talked about free trade it was sold to the people in Canada as free trade. To me free trade means free. We know it is not happening. We know it never did happen. Maybe we should be looking at fair trade. We should start looking at that issue and get rid of this concept of free trade because it is not free. It is costly.
For those who think that this has impacts only on those working in the forests, I have news for them. Everyone who is laid off in the forest industry, whether it be in the mills or in the bush, has impacts on the communities they live in, right down to the teachers, because if there are no jobs, people move to find jobs. It has impacts on the classrooms, the stores and the hospitals. It impacts everything. The government does not seem to understand that. This impacts not only small communities in our rural areas, it impacts right across Canada. Every time people have to go on unemployment or assistance of some sort, it has impacts on the social safety net. The government has to understand this. I am sure that if this was the textile industry or it was taking place somewhere close to home here in Ottawa that the government would understand exactly what we are talking about.
I find this situation highly degrading for a number of people, particularly those in British Columbia because they are who was referred to when the parliamentary secretary stood in the House and called them nervous nellies. They are losing their homes. They are losing their trucks. I find it quite exceptional that someone could even conceive of standing in the House to say “quit acting like nervous nellies”.
We have to come to some kind of agreement. We cannot stay on this route with the Americans. In my own opinion, and only my own opinion, it is time the government got tough. It is time the government got tough on these issues. The Americans depend upon us and we depend upon them. It is that simple. There is nothing wrong with bargaining hard, the same as they have been doing with us. We can do it. All we need to have is the will from the government. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with using linkage, if that is what it takes to resolve the issue.
I heard a member from the other side of the House say, and quite rightly so, that since September 11 nobody wants to take a hard line with the United States. I do. I will say that right now on this issue. The Americans are wrong. It is a small interest group that has driven this agenda to where it is now. The Americans are right in some respects. Their foremost interest right now is the security of their nation. That is one way in which they are right, for those on the other side of the House who wanted me to name one. Their primary interest is the security of their nation and rightly so.
If somehow we could loosen up those concerns, and they have come to us on a number of these issues, we would then be able to free up some of the senators who we know are sympathetic to the issue we have here regarding softwood lumber and we would be able to have them pay more attention to what is going on in this industry, because we do have support on the issue in their senate and their congress. We have consumer support in the States. There is overriding support from consumers to get rid of these countervailing duties on our lumber. They should not be there.
A lot of people do not even understand what softwood is and where it comes from. We need time to better educate the people. It is pine and spruce. They like to throw in cedar and fir. It has impacts across all aspects of the building industry in the United States.
I find it very strange that the government has had all this time and yet has done absolutely nothing in this regard except during the last five or six months. The Americans have lost their challenges in regard to this issue with Canada, yet they keep coming back. Now is the time to get a final agreement on this and really force the issue. We have to. Our people out there are depending upon us, not only in B.C., Quebec and Ontario but all across Canada.
All I can do is implore the government on behalf of the working people in Canada, those who depend on this industry, to please finally do something and do it fast. This is a crisis. If the government cannot do anything on the governmental side to fix the crisis with regard to the trade dispute, it should at least look at some way of offsetting the costs of the layoffs. This is a crisis as big as any the government has seen, bigger than the ice storm crisis. The government has to be responsible because it is a trade dispute and it is out of the hands of the workers. It is a trade dispute and the government is responsible for trade.