Mr. Speaker, I found the points expressed by the parliamentary secretary to be persuasive and very much on topic.
The motion before us today is quite scandalous. It would take away from the consensus we have in Canada and the great job our trade minister has been doing to build a consensus in the forest products sector on the softwood lumber dispute. It is not a simple task because we have very disparate groups such as the coastal industry in B.C., the interior industry, the pulp and paper industry, the softwood lumber industry, and east versus west. However the trade minister has been able to achieve consensus and unanimity. That is not always an easy task.
We should be focusing on the real problem which lies south of the border in Washington, D.C. We know for sure that the U.S. government has embarked on a huge period of inward looking protectionism. It is almost like the period of the Munroe doctrine many years ago when the U.S. government of the day and the American people said they would focus inward, forget about the world and look after themselves.
We have worked co-operatively with the United States on many fronts. The Americans are great friends of ours. However if the U.S. administration had really wanted to deal with softwood lumber it could have dealt with it. The president could have asserted pressure on the various stakeholder groups, lobby groups, and powerful U.S. senators and congressmen and women.
We often underestimate the power of the White House. When the president invites the players in to have a discussion and make a point of view, they listen. What has the U.S. president done in this case? He has done nothing. Has he brought in the players explain to them that Canada is an ally with which the U.S. has an important relationship? Has he put pressure on them? He has not because the U.S. is going through an inward looking period of self interest.
What about Kyoto? We can all debate whether Kyoto is a good or bad deal but President Bush unilaterally said the U.S. was scrapping it. Did he have an alternative plan? No, he did not. Greenhouse gases are a problem. This has put Canada and the world in a difficult position because the United States is one of the biggest generators of greenhouse gases.
This is all is part of a process of drawing inward during a period when the United States is going into congressional and senatorial elections. Does the U.S. administration have the guts to call in the players and tell them Canada is an important ally and friend? Has he told U.S. lumber producers that Canada has won every time? Has he told them they should look more clearly at whether their actions are appropriate and that they had better go back to the drawing board? I very much doubt it. If he had done so it would have had an effect.
The same could be said about the U.S. farm aid bill. The same could be said about steel or pasta. I recently became aware of a company in Toronto with 300 employees that is fighting subsidies paid by the U.S. administration to U.S. pasta producers. It is creating an uneven playing field for pasta producers in Canada.
This is one of a litany of U.S. inward focused protectionist actions driven by self interest and partisan politics. The U.S. president wants a majority in the senate but at what cost? He has said to cut Canada and other allies adrift because it is so important to him. It is nice that he has the self indulgence to forget about the rest of the world.
It is ironic that we had the Prime Minister stand in the House during question period to welcome the new leader of the official opposition. He said we had a lot of information on positions that had been expressed by the leader of the official opposition, one of them apparently being support for Mulroney style trade tactics and policies. That is interesting.
In 1986 when Brian Mulroney was looking for fast track support in the U.S. and he and Ronald Reagan were singing blarney and When Irish Eyes are Smiling and were the greatest of buddies, did he have the guts to tell the U.S. administration and the president they were hurting our softwood lumber industry? No, he did not.
Everyone in the House should read a book called Who's In Charge Here, Anyway? written by Adam Zimmerman of Noranda Forest Inc. Zimmerman was very much involved in the softwood lumber disputes and was a mentor of mine. The book talks about Brian Mulroney and Pat Carney, the trade minister at the time who sold Canada's lumber industry down the river. Did Brian Mulroney raise the issue with U.S. president Reagan? Of course he did not. He wanted to fast track to get the NAFTA. What did he do? He cut loose thousands of Canadians who sacrificed their jobs so he could get his 15% lumber export tax. Is that not nice? Those are the kinds of policies the opposition party wants. It wants Mulroney style trade policies. Is that not grand?
There are alternatives to the current process of countervailing duties. I had a discussion one day with Gordon Ritchie, one of the lead negotiators in NAFTA and the FTA. I asked him about concepts like net subsidies, serious prejudice, and fighting trade disputes through the prism of competition policy. Among trade gurus, and I am not one of them, there are alternatives to the countervailing duty process.
The countervailing duty process is skewed in favour of the Americans. All we can do as Canadians is defend our system. We cannot attack their system. If we had a system of net subsidies the Americans could only launch countervailing challenges if they could show that on balance net subsidies were greater in Canada than in the United States. Then we would not have this problem.
When I was in the forest products industry I went to the United States to meet with the governors of several states. If one wanted to put up an OSB mill, a saw mill, a pulp mill or a paper mill they would roll out goodies like sales tax abatements, property tax abatements, tax holidays of all descriptions, cheap industrial land, and cogeneration agreements that would knock one's socks off. However can we attack U.S. subsidies? No, we cannot. Because they are narrowly defined through U.S. trade law all we can do is respond with ours.
We can argue about trying to change trade remedies under NAFTA. However while the U.S. congress and senate guardedly protect, and from their perspective rightly so, the domain of the U.S. congress and senate over trade law we can talk until the cows come home about trying to get better trade remedies. We can talk until the cows home about getting a better definition of subsidy or dumping because the Americans will not agree to it. They will not agree because they look at their own narrow self interest instead of trying to be a world player. If the U.S. was a world player it would only look at whether action in Canada was non-competitive in nature. In other words, it would ask whether it constituted predatory pricing or price fixing.
The Americans could look at these disputes through the prism of competition policy. It is the biggest competitive nation in the world. Does it do that? No, it focuses on subsidies and dumping through the narrow confines of its own trade law because that is what suits its self interest.
It is terrible to have this motion before the House. The Prime Minister has had the guts to raise softwood lumber and U.S. farm aid with the president on many occasions while Tory prime minister Brian Mulroney rolled it under the carpet. Brian Mulroney did not have the guts to take it up with the U.S. president but our Prime Minister has. Our trade minister has been able to forge a great consensus in the country on softwood lumber and a whole range of other issues.
Instead of focusing on this side of the border we should be focusing on the White House, the U.S. congress and U.S. senators. We should be trying to build awareness in the United States about what the issue is doing to Canadians and to house prices in the United States. I am glad our government has responded with a promotional campaign which will attempt to do that.