Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lethbridge who has a good knowledge of this issue. He has a far better knowledge of this issue than I can say for the Liberal government. I was astounded by the comment by the member from Ancaster--Dundas when he said that the government had free trade when the SLA ran out.
I cannot imagine that the Liberal government was so oblivious to the past record of the United States on softwood lumber that it would think for a moment that there would not be challenges coming very quickly after the SLA ran out. That is the problem. There was no planning for the expiry of the SLA on behalf of the government.
It is an absolute correct statement to say that the members of the Reform Party and now the Alliance have been the pre-eminent speakers on this whole softwood lumber agreement issue. The member for Vancouver Island North has spoken in the House going back to prior to the signing of the SLA. He warned the government of the perils that awaited should the agreement be signed. He probably spoke more than 25 or 30 times in the last five years on the issue as disaster upon disaster resulted from the softwood lumber agreement. He stood in the House, as have I and many of our colleagues, and urged the government to prepare for the expiry of the softwood lumber agreement.
It is clear that the government never really got involved in this softwood lumber agreement crisis until some time in December 2000, some three months before the expiry date. Then all of a sudden it was going to waltz in and try to solve the thing. It would have been nice if it had, but the fact is it did precious little between then and the expiry date of the SLA. Since then it does not appear that the government made very much progress on it as well.
We are now faced with the free trade that we were used to in softwood lumber over the last 25 years where the United States industry through its large and powerful lobby groups would challenge the export of Canadian softwood lumber into the United States. It has quite predictably slapped a tariff and extra duties onto the Canadian softwood lumber going into the United States.
Is anybody really surprised that it has happened? Certainly not all of us in the opposition but obviously the Liberal government is surprised about it. The government did nothing for five years while it was waiting for the SLA to expire and then it hoped by some miracle that the American forest and softwood lumber industry would just let us have unfettered free trade into the United States for our softwood products.
That is the record of mismanagement of the government on the softwood lumber issue. We should not blame it too much because it simply does not understand the issue. Let us give the government some relief of blame for that.
The finance minister was out in Quesnel, B.C. about three or four weeks ago. I am told by the people in Quesnel, which is a big lumber town in north central B.C., that they almost had to smack him with a 2x4 of softwood lumber to get him to recognize that there was a problem. He said some niceties and said he would go back to Ottawa and encourage and almost demand that the Prime Minister get involved personally with President Bush and get this thing done. That was something that was not a rocket science suggestion. We have been suggesting it for a number of years.
I come from north central British Columbia, probably the softwood lumber capital of Canada and perhaps the world. To give the House an idea of the importance of softwood lumber in our region our forest companies produce about 3.9 billion board feet of lumber every single year. We have the most modern and highly technological mills in the world. We produce enough lumber to build about 475,000 single dwelling homes every year. We could produce far more than that because of the efficiency of our mills.
The housing for which we can produce lumber represents about three times the annual new housing starts in Canada. We do it every year. Our mills in northern B.C. produce about 40% of B.C.'s total softwood lumber output. That represents about 21% of Canada's total production of softwood lumber.
Needless to say, the mismanagement of the softwood lumber issue by the Liberal government has had a disastrous effect on the economy of British Columbia as a whole but in particular the area of B.C. I come from because it is so forestry dependent.
We are faced with a government that seems willing to seek a band aid approach to the softwood lumber crisis rather than fight for what we should rightfully have in Canada: free and unfettered trade in softwood lumber with the United States of America. It appears the government, having let the issue get into an absolute crisis mode, is willing to sign an agreement that would give us not free trade in softwood lumber but managed trade.
That is not what the government should do. It is not about free trade with the United States. The government has mismanaged the case. It is looking for a band aid fix. It is the same way it has managed the country for the last nine years. It has never made substantive changes. It has always preferred a band aid approach. That is not the way to run a country and it is certainly not the way to run the softwood lumber issue.
For five years our member for Vancouver Island North has constantly stood in the House and given the Liberal government every amount of assistance he could give to help it manage the softwood lumber issue. He has gone to the United States and made close associations with Americans in the industry and in government. He has talked with representatives of the American Affordable Housing Institute and the National Association of Homebuilders. He has been in touch with the industry in Canada and worked closely with it.
However the government has been so partisan minded that it has discounted every bit of good advice the hon. member for Vancouver Island North has given it. It is fair comment to say my hon. colleague from Vancouver Island has forgotten more about softwood lumber than the Liberals ever knew. The Minister for International Trade has demonstrated that in spades. So has the Prime Minister. So has the parliamentary secretary. I am sure the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has not given the issue a thought.
We are in a crisis. We need to protect the right of Canada to unfettered free trade with the United States. That is the bottom line.
The government says it is okay to have unfettered free trade in the oil and gas industry and some manufacturing sectors but for some reason it refuses to fight for it in the softwood lumber industry. This is a pure example of the federal government's attitude toward western Canada and some of the eastern provinces in which our party is under-represented from an electoral point of view.
Most disturbing of all is that ministers of the government who live in British Columbia and know the issue and its impact have been telling the government to get it done and it has not. That is typical of the Liberal government.