Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will share my time with the member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière.
It is an honour to speak to the motion moved by the Bloc Quebecois inviting the government to set up an assistance program for the softwood lumber industry, considering the terrible crisis lumber plants and forest workers of our regions are going through at this time.
If I may go beyond partisan politics, I wish to say that the opposition has shown a sense of responsibility beyond reproach in the softwood lumber issue. First, we supported the government strategy. Never, throughout the debate, has the opposition been derelict in its duty to support the government's strategy, to advise the minister and bring an extremely positive contribution to negotiations as a whole, particularly with regard to the attitudes we should have in Canada and especially in Quebec, the region the Bloc Quebecois is most interested in. We have always tried to create a solid block with the government and with the lumber industry, in order to bring the issue to a positive outcome.
This was not the case. Against our will, that of the government and of all Canadians, we have engaged in this legal saga that unfortunately will stretch out long enough to be harmful.
The opposition no longer agrees with the government in terms of the steps to be taken to support the lumber industry, and this where we have a problem. I represent a riding where this industry is the main component of our economy. In the riding of Roberval, there are small, medium and large size sawmills. The most efficient mill in eastern Canada, Barrette-Chapais, is located in the riding of Roberval.
As the member for Roberval, softwood lumber and logging are issues that I always hold near and dear because they involve hundreds of families whose daily lives depend on the logging industry, and logging depends of what we are able to sell to the United States.
When the government refuses to take responsibility for setting up an assistance program for businesses and workers, then we stop following. We stop following the Minister for International Trade when he has the gall to tell reporters and to repeat in the House that if the lumber industry is in trouble in certain regions, it is not due to the trade dispute with the United States but rather to management problems. He says that the government will certainly not use taxpayers' money to solve management problems that have nothing to do with the softwood lumber crisis.
Even Statistics Canada admits, in a recently released bulletin, that the lumber production in Quebec is at its lowest level in ten years. I am not making it up. This is not happening because management problems in sawmills have all surfaced this year. One does not have to be a psychic or an economist to understand that.
Lumber production is limited to a strict minimum, and logging is even more limited. I want to take this opportunity to set all partisanship aside and to tell the minister about the situation as the member for Roberval. I was in my riding last weekend and I was there last week too. I went to Démo Forêt 2000, in Dolbeau-Mistassini, in the riding of Roberval, and the whole forest industry from my riding was there.
One has to see the tragedy that hundreds of workers are going through, logging machine owners and truck owners with payments of $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000 a month, people who normally earn their living honestly by transporting tree-length wood from the northern area of Lake St. John down to our sawmills. One has to see these people who, for the most part, have not worked at all since last spring.
It is not because the plant they transport lumber for is not operating anymore, but because it is working at a slower pace, since stocks are being depleted and the owners of big plants are saying “I cannot carry on forestry operations, I am dipping into my reserve. Because of the softwood lumber crisis, I will soon be running into a problem. I cannot pay the duties and produce in the same way”.
The drama is underway in the riding of Roberval. I would like to tell the minister, an MP from an urban riding, who must still have the sensitivity, as Minister for International Trade, of an MP from a rural riding or a forestry region and understand that the human and economic dramas unfolding at the moment are directly linked to the conflict with the United States. The drama has been taking place in our families for several months already. Small logging companies in the riding of Roberval are just about all at a standstill, or nearly.
On Sunday afternoon in my riding, I met the owner of a small sawmill employing 50 people in a community where there is no other employment. She told me “I stopped activity, as I usually do in the winter, but I have started again, and I am going as slowly as possible. I expect to stop soon. I cannot imagine paying 27% in taxes. My profit margin is nowhere near that amount. I will not survive. I hope the government will give us some help”.
Is it not the responsibility of the government, after waging the softwood lumber war, to help business? I give it credit for the softwood lumber war, and it must continue to fight it. What I am saying is not partisan, however, the government and its ministers also have to assume responsibility and realize that a serious drama is unfolding. The government has the means to help the industry.
As it is the victim of a trade war, the Bloc Quebecois has shown its creative side. We have tabled a recovery plan. We decided that, if the government supported the big companies with loan guarantees enabling them to absorb the cost of the American surtax, we would succeed in helping the big companies.
There are two or three ways the government could provide assistance to small businesses. We are talking about diversification and an assistance fund for small businesses. The government must provide guarantees to support small plants, to give them hope in the future, to make the banks trust them, because banks have come to realize that there is a crisis in the softwood lumber industry due to our trade war with the U.S. The government must help the workers. I can only think of the families, the heads of the families who will have to rely on an EI program which does not provide benefits for all that long—nobody can argue with that—has very high eligibility criteria and ignores older workers.
The government must set up a massive, well-targeted program for each of its client groups. It is our duty to support regional economies. The government not only has the duty, but it has the means. What a great opportunity. We have the means. The government has the means to provide assistance to the regions, the small businesses, the big corporations, families and small businesspeople who are having trouble making ends meet. It is its responsibility.
Our responsibility is to suggest ways to go about it. We have done that, but, just like the industry and the workers, we will never agree with the minister when he has the gall to say “There is no crisis in the softwood lumber industry. There are only management problems, and our regular programs will be enough”.
What we have here is an exceptional situation. I urge the government to take exceptional measures to support our regional economies; otherwise, things will turn ugly in the next few months in regions like Saguenay--Lac-Saint-Jean and the riding of Roberval. I will not be able to just stand there and watch.