Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys.
Our country is suffering. If the fear that washed over the continent nearly two months ago was not enough bad news for Canadians, waking up to find they have lost their jobs could very well be the last straw for some.
There are huge problems being faced by our constituents from coast to coast to coast. While my constituency in southern Alberta is struggling through a terrible drought, our cousins over the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia and, indeed, Canadians right across the country are facing a bleak Christmas because of the softwood lumber dispute.
The numbers are staggering. Thousands of people do not have jobs today because of this ongoing, dragged out, unfair dispute. Canadians are looking for something more than a stern talking to from the international trade minister to his American counterpart. They want the minister to give him more than an earful. We must have a concrete plan to deal with this problem. We must get answers, fairness and guarantees from our largest trading partner.
The situation is totally unacceptable. The softwood lumber agreement expired on March 31 and the softwood lumber dispute started the next day. That was seven months ago. Canada has gone for over 200 days without a trade agreement, without guidelines for one of our largest and most lucrative exports. This is not responsible management. It is like being a real estate agent and having no deeds to the houses being sold.
We are in a mess today because the Liberal government in all its wisdom did not think it was an issue important enough to raise or to address before it turned around and bit our citizens in their pocketbooks. Even now when we have so many suffering from these unfair tariffs and duties some felt it was prudent to call these people nervous nellies. I would like to get someone to stand in front of a logger who cannot support his family because he is laid off and call him a nervous nellie. I would like to see the response then.
The minister is finally meeting with former governor Racicot of Montana, but we need more than talk. There have been no dates set and no deadlines given. What are we to tell families when they call our offices and ask what their government is doing to help them now that their job is gone and their family is under severe stress? What do we say as members of parliament? Do we tell them that the government is talking about it? That does not buy groceries. It is just more rhetoric and emptiness. We need action. With so many Canadians suffering, this should be at the top of the list of this government's priorities.
The Prime Minister said that he chatted with the U.S. president about this issue while he was in China. He has stated that if the United States wants our oil and power, it had better take our wood too. However this is just more talk, not concrete action.
The industry is facing revenue losses of more than $1 billion and that is just to date. There is no deadline given to end this hemorrhaging. Even though I will talk just about British Columbia, this is really a countrywide problem. On the British Columbia coast alone, 21 of 35 mills have shut down as a result of the first duty, with the loss of some 12,500 jobs. This latest tariff has put 30,000 more jobs at risk. These are not just jobs. These are people and families. This is an entire industry.
Rip the heart out of a province like B.C., and let us not kid ourselves, softwood lumber is the heart of British Columbia, we will not have a healthy, functioning province. We will have another have not province through no mismanagement or fault of its own. Like I said, this problem is not confined to British Columbia alone. When 40,000 well paying jobs are knocked out of the workforce we can forget the ripple effect: it causes a tidal wave of economic woe flooding over the people and businesses surrounding them.
Let us put this into context and really look at who this is affecting and how it impacts a community. With no market for softwood lumber, it leaves the fallers in the woods with their saws silent. They are now laid off and at home. Camps are empty. Many of these people have young families to support. Truck drivers do not have a product to ship. They too are out of work and will not be buying anything other than the bare essentials. Again, the whole community suffers as a result.
Gas station owners have no trucks to fill or drivers to sell coffee or lunches to. Employees are being laid off. Many of these workers are students and young people who are trying hard to make ends meet. It also has impacts on the heavy duty mechanics and shop owners. The vast majority of the rigs they work on are logging trucks. The bays are now empty and the pits are silent. It has impacts on the parts suppliers for those rigs. With no work being done in the woods there is no need for maintenance.
It also has impacts on the general business owners. When people are out of work they are not likely to purchase anything but the essentials of life, never mind a washing machine, a bed or a television set. When those sales are not made by the business owners, then their employees get laid off and they go into zero spending mode too. It has impacts on the mill workers who do not have a log to cut and on the work experience student without a floor to sweep.
The list goes on and on. We cannot have the cornerstone of the foundation of a country's economy crumble and expect everything to be fine. The government and the Prime Minister need to deal with the problem at a rapid pace because this is an emergency and it could not have hit at a worse time. A recession is already in full force, a gloomy scenario at best.
Let us look at the U.S. lumber lobby's case. U.S. producers have alleged that they have been injured by unfair Canadian competition. They argue that the Canadian provinces set stumpage fees at less than market value and that the system where the provinces own 94% of Canadian timberlands, meaning crown lands, contrasts sharply with the United States where only 42% of the timberlands is publicly owned and where both private and government timber generally is sold competitively at auction.
The U.S. industry does not even produce the quality or quantity that Canadian producers can provide. Home builders and other lumber user groups in the states agree with us. They support the free trade of softwood lumber. The consumer groups in the states support our position.
U.S. producers argue that they have been injured by imports of Canadian softwood lumber. They point to the steady growth in Canadian exports and market share, from less than three billion board feet and 7% of U.S. lumber consumption in 1952 to more than 18 billion board feet annually since 1998 and a market share of more than 33% since 1995. The fact is that the U.S. industry has been unable to satisfy the growth in its own domestic demand. U.S. home builders and other lumber users point out that Canadian lumber is needed to satisfy U.S. demands. The quality of the product speaks for itself.
This is totally unjustified action by the U.S. lumber lobby and those lobbying know it. We have been cleared of any wrongdoing time and again, as has been mentioned many times this evening. The Canadian industry has been challenged three times. No subsidies were found in 1983. In 1986 preliminary subsidy findings led to a memorandum of understanding with a 15% Canadian tax on lumber exported to the United States and 6.5% countervailing duty in 1992. In 1992 the countervailing duty was challenged under the U.S.-Canada free trade agreement and it was terminated in 1994.
A U.S.-Canada softwood lumber agreement was reached in 1996 and we all know who was in power in 1996. It is this government that created this softwood lumber agreement, which expired, as we have said, on March 31.
Will we be found to have played by the rules and will all penalties be lifted and reimbursed? Certainly, but these proceedings take an excruciating amount of time and money and frankly we cannot wait that long. If we do not have action in the meantime, more mills will have long since been shut down before the agreement is finalized.
We empathize with the people and their families who are suffering as a result of these ludicrous duties and tariffs. I hope the minister hears them too and takes them seriously. We owe it to the men and women of the country who are all affected by a major blow to the economy such as this to hammer out a fair, strong, long term solution: a free trade agreement on softwood lumber and nothing else.
I would like to close with a couple of personal comments. Members from all sides of the House went as a group to Washington, D.C. in July and lobbied elected senators on the issue. We met with many of them. Some did not know much about it but some had been told that we were heavily subsidizing the industry. We tried to give them the facts. We met with consumer groups that support our position 100%. These tariffs are driving up the price of a home in the United States by as much as $3,500, some say, so there are consumer groups that support what we are doing in Canada in looking for free trade in softwood lumber.
Mr. Racicot, former governor of Montana, is on the file now and working with the trade minister, which gives us some hope, but we should be looking to our government to end this dispute very quickly. The families and people depending upon the industry need it done.