Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise for this debate. It is a subject we have talked about on several occasions, it continues to go on and on and it will go on as long as the government is here.
I will be dividing my time with the member for Brandon--Souris who will address the agricultural side to this debate and I will focus on softwood lumber.
The motion is really quite telling and I am sure the government cannot be too proud of it. It reads:
That this House has lost confidence in the government for its failure to persuade the U.S. government to end protectionist policies that are damaging Canada's agriculture and lumber industries and for failing to implement offsetting trade injury measures for the agriculture and lumber sectors.
The government has failed but it is not all its fault. The U.S. has used strong-armed tactics and taken a very inflexible approach. However the fact of the matter is that this government has failed Canadian industry whereas the American government has succeeded in representing American industry very well. The American industry interests are looked after and the Canadian industry interests are not. The government has failed because it has a lack of imagination, initiative and inability to bring together the industry, provinces and all stakeholders.
Everybody on the opposition side harped on for months and months about this. Rule one is that united we stand, divided we fall. The government allowed the Canadian initiative to be all over the board. Representatives from the provinces went to Washington. Representatives from the regions went to Washington. Lumber groups went to Washington. Then the federal government went to Washington and it was surprised to find out it was the last one to go and that everybody had been there before it. There has been a total lack of co-ordination with the industry and a total failure on behalf of the government.
It is a failure because we have a 27.2% tariff on our lumber industry. The government has failed where others have succeeded. Previous governments, and one of which I was a member, ran into the same opposition, the same protagonists, the same issues and the same arguments and we overcame them. This government has not been able to overcome them because it does not have the imagination or whatever it takes to do that. It has failed. It simply has not been able to match the Americans person per person in its arguments.
Now we find ourselves in a very serious situation. What are the results of the failure? Thousands of people in the industry will be laid off and are being laid off as we speak. Communities are totally affected because many of them are one industry towns. This means that the small businesses, the corner stores, the clothing stores, the car dealers and everybody are affected by the downturn when a mill closes in communities. It has a tremendous impact. Businesses will be lost, never to come back. Savings will be lost forever. Houses will be lost. The impact is pervasive in these communities, and this will happen across the country.
It means that kids will not go to university. There are so many impacts. What is the government reaction? The minister said that there were no direct job loses linked to the situation with the U.S. and that the government could not intervene every time there was a natural restructuring in one industry's market and that things would have to be sorted out. Ask the people who are losing their homes, their small businesses, their RRSPs, their retirements and everything else, if there is an impact. The minister said there were no direct job loses. That is just not true.
The failure is easy to explain. I picked out two quotes, one from an industry in Canada and one from the trade representative in the United States. The president of Doman Industries said:
Governments should be embarrassed by their lack of progress in negotiating a settlement and provide help to forest dependent communities
That is a Canadian industry saying that the government should be ashamed.
The other quote is by Mr. Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative. He said:
The sense I've gotten from the Canadian government is they're not interested in further discussions--they're going to play this out at the [World Trade Organization].
He went on to say that it was a callous and awful attitude to take. That was his impression of the Canadian government's reaction, that it did not want to negotiate or deal.
Meanwhile people and communities across the country are suffering and losing everything they have. The industry is in chaos. They do not know where to ship their products. They do not know whether to send them east, west, south or north. They do not know how to handle it.
From the beginning everyone on the opposition side said over and over to get the industry together and establish one strategy. It said not to let the provinces, or the lumber organizations or the regions go to Washington to independently negotiate. However that is what the government did. Instead of getting everyone together and allowing the federal government to negotiate the deal, it let everyone go to Washington. This happens frequently. Then when representatives of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International trade went down, they were the last ones to arrive. The Americans must be laughing at our approach to this. We have failed to develop a strategy which reflects the entire industry.
Let us compare this with how the U.S. government has done it. It has worked hand in hand with its industry. In fact, at the direction of the U.S. lumber industry, it has established strategies and tactics, exactly what the U.S. industry wants, and it has succeeded. The Canadian government does not bring the stakeholders together. It thinks it can do it all by itself. We have the provinces and the regions going to Washington. It must be a joke in Washington.
In the face of failure, how do we react? Do we reach out to the people affected? Do we try to help? No, the government has said that there are no job losses and that everything is just hunky-dory. It is like saying people have jobs but they cannot go to them and they will not get a paycheque. It is incredible how the government is allowing a wave of devastation to go across the country, one that will hurt all these communities.
The government has created the problem. It should be part of alleviating the problem. I am not saying it is simple because the Americans are tough negotiators. However the government has failed where other governments have succeeded in dealing with the same issue with the same people. It should stand and say that it is responsible and it will help.
I saw on television yesterday that the government announced a $20 million advertising program that would solve the problem. It will spend the money in the U.S. and probably funnel it through Groupaction in Quebec. The only result will be that the friends of the Liberals will get their kickbacks and their share of the $20 million.