Madam Speaker, I know they get excited when we on this side speak, but I appreciate your help.
What is disturbing is that the Prime Minister does not yet accept that the American administration might be in a more accommodating mood if he had not said he wanted President Bush's opponent to win the last election in the United States. Instead, the Prime Minister makes a joke that has enraged British Columbians and all of us who are proud to represent British Columbia in this parliament. The few who were not enraged by that insensitive remark were Liberal members of parliament. We promise that in those few ridings the voters will remember the Prime Minister's joke.
British Columbian members of parliament are welcome in this party and we will make sure that we bring even more with us in the next election. Judging by all the phone calls, British Columbians are already rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation of helping us do that.
Then there is the Minister for International Trade, the minister who bungled international trade, especially the softwood lumber file. He dropped it like it was greased. He fumbled it like it was a hot rock. He said that job losses were due to restructuring. Due to restructuring? Was he all three of the monkeys that saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil? Did he not hear from mayors, from workers and from management that the industry would be in crisis if the Americans were to do what they have done? Was he not there that Monday or did he send his perfect twin?
Restructuring is just not even in the cards on this issue. Where did he come up with that word? What brilliant bureaucrat in his department offered him that gem to pass along to Canadians? Or was it the ethics counsellor, with his talent for turning pigs' ears into silk purses?
Then there is that other obscure backbencher over there who said that British Columbians were “nervous nellies”. I can assure everyone that British Columbians are not nervous nellies, but the few Liberals who hold seats in our great province certainly are. If anyone wants to see an endangered species they can look at the Liberal members of parliament from British Columbia. Premier Gordon Campbell of British Columbia, at the softwood summit last Monday with the international trade minister sitting at his side, confirmed a potential 50,000 layoffs. So much for the minister's listening skills.
The announcement last week by the U.S. trade commission is a major blow for the national economy. Those softwood workers pay hundreds of millions of dollars into the treasury through income taxes. They are consumers, borrowers, families and school board supporters. We in the opposition saw this train wreck coming two years ago and warned the government, but once again the government was not listening just as the trade minister was not listening last Monday at the softwood summit when he was sitting next to the premier who said that 50,000 jobs were at stake. He calls that restructuring? There is something wrong with that.
Two and a half years ago, the hon. member for Vancouver Island North undertook on his own to contact and establish relations on behalf of our softwood industry with the group called American Consumers for Affordable Homes. His relationship with that group made the Alliance the first party to embrace its free trade position, long before the government had even heard of that group.
I know this simple fact is hard for members on the other side to grasp, but more than softwood workers' jobs are at stake here. People employed by trucking companies, aviation service companies, marine service companies and catering service companies, just to name a few, will all suffer, and not just in British Columbia. We are talking about that because the minister was there last Monday and there are 50,000 job losses in that province. This is going to happen right across Canada.
There are not only workers to worry about. There are spouses and children. They are all suffering because the government neglected the file and abandoned the softwood industry, those workers and their families.
Before I conclude, I want to tell the softwood lumber industry and all those workers that while the government was ignoring them, members of the Canadian Alliance were not. We were working hard both here in parliament and in the United States to find solutions. The member for Vancouver Island North deserves most of that credit. He has done a phenomenal job. That is what this government in waiting does and I hope the industry and the workers will remember that when they get their time for revenge at the next federal election.
The last thing the government needs is another Liberal member of parliament. I hope Canadians remember that in the byelections next Monday. I hope they send the Prime Minister a message that the government has done a poor job on softwood lumber, agriculture and other problems. It does not deserve to elect any members next Monday.