Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver Centre. More and more in the House we are hearing debates on opposition day motions wherein members of the opposition seem to be struggling to find a position that substantively criticizes the actions of the government and to be moving on to more personalized attacks against the government.
I would like to bring this debate back to more of a businesslike atmosphere rather than the chirping that seems to be coming from across the way. I do not mind that; it tends to motivate and encourage me to carry on with my remarks.
I want to point out a couple of things. The first is that I really believe what is happening here is actually an attack on our sovereignty as a nation. It is an attack on our ability through our Confederation to determine how we will do business within our country and with other parts of the world.
Let us take the issue of stumpage. Stumpage, for the folks at home, is basically a system used by the provincial governments to manage the forests. They give out licences to lumber companies that in turn go out and harvest, and I use the word harvest because that is exactly what it is, the product from the forest under terms of the agreement that require them to replenish what they take away. The object under a proper forest management program strategy is that we not deplete what is clearly an important resource to our country.
The Americans do not like that because they operate a little differently. They simply go out in the world of let the strongest survive and buy the stumpage, buy the forest and do with it what they will. I do not challenge their right to do that. I would say, though, that under agreements like Kyoto and in other environmental areas there are concerns internationally about too much clear-cutting and raping of the land.
I would hope the Americans would look at it as more than just a trade dispute and recognize the impact that unfettered forestry operations could have on the environment. It also has a major impact on the economy.
We cannot sit back and tell the Americans to go ahead and tell us how we should manage our forests. Under the terms of Confederation that is a provincial responsibility. The issue we are debating is one of fair and free trade. What has happened?
Let us be fair to our friends south of the border in this regard. How do they compete with a 62 cent or 63 cent dollar? On top of that, how do they compete with an industry that is much more efficient, that produces a better quality product which their consumers are demanding in huge numbers?
They have difficulty because they would have to then turn around and invest tens or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the quality of their industry, of what they are producing in terms of a quality product. How can they address this issue? Either they make those investments over the long term and compete with the good quality Canadian wood or they call up George and slap on a duty. That is the easier way for them to do it. By slapping on a duty they then make our products more expensive to consumers in the United States.
I am quite sure the Prime Minister will be pointing out to President Bush that a number of very important groups in the United States actually want Canadian softwood lumber. Consumer associations have called for it. The housing and building industries are demanding that they be allowed to have access to softwood lumber.
A company we all know well, Home Depot, has stated on record in the United States that this is an unfair duty, that it is anti-free trade and that it should be eliminated.
I say to my friends opposite that the wording of their motion is almost like motherhood. Their simple solution is that we should somehow negotiate an agreement. For every major problem in government there is a simple solution and it is inevitably the wrong solution. What we need to do with the Americans is to put in place a long term sustainable agreement.
Our minister has met with and negotiated agreements with the provinces and industry. This is a dispute that has been going on back and forth for 20 or 25 years in one way or another. People are standing with the minister on a platform and saying that for the first time there is a united front in Canada.
People can poke fun at the fact that Canada is not as big and powerful as the United States. However let us not take away the impact that a trade war would have on both sides of the border. Some 87% of our exports go to the United States. An official opposition member suggested that all team Canada trade missions should be cancelled until this dispute is solved. What a brilliant strategy it would be to tell everyone around the world that we will stay in bed, pull the covers over our head and not carry on trade until this one dispute is resolved.
For members opposite to suggest in any way that the government has not taken firm action is just ludicrous. It is painting a picture to suggest that somehow we have poisoned relationships. A member opposite accused our Prime Minister of stating during the last federal election in the United States that he was rooting for the Democrats. Comments like that are misleading the Canadian public. It is very unfortunate that members opposite would use this kind of tactic during a serious debate on an issue which has an impact on jobs in virtually every part of the country.
People ask me why someone from Mississauga would care about this dispute. Let us think of the impact in a community like Mississauga with its growth rate and the building that has gone on in the housing industry. Let us think of the economic impact if our lumber industry were severely damaged. When 10,000 people lose their jobs in Thunder Bay in the lumber industry, I can assure the House that the ripple effect will come down the Great Lakes into Mississauga, into the greater Toronto area and throughout the rest of Canada. There is no question.
This is not just a British Columbia issue. I do not deny the significance to British Columbia. It is critical. I hope we can resolve it to save jobs in that province. However this is a critical issue for Ontario, New Brunswick and for every part of the province of Quebec. It is critical for all of us.
Alliance members have an attitude of wanting to embarrass the government. They pontificate about how supposedly we do not care about the issue. I would suggest that our Minister for International Trade has done a lot of things in the past well, but no issue has been worked on more diligently and with greater effort than the dispute in softwood lumber.
We had success in the steel negotiations. It could have been catastrophic for Algoma Steel and my home town of Sault Ste. Marie if we had not been able to make a deal that made sense and at least gave us an exclusion from what the Americans did. I do not happen to like what they did in other parts of the world, but we are not elected to represent all of the world.
We have to protect Canadian business interests, Canadian jobs and the Canadian economy. I challenge anyone in this place who says the government is not doing that. As we speak our Prime Minister is meeting with the president and we will hopefully get a resolution to this issue.