Mr. Speaker, I think that I can detect, through the questions of the secretary of state, a degree of openness and a desire to answer the pressing plea that I made.
I should point out to the hon. member that the figures that we have were provided to us by very reliable sources, namely the lumber manufacturers' association and Statistics Canada. There is also a number of other useful sources. All told, we are talking about 35,000 direct jobs in plants and in the forest, for Quebec alone.
My region is hit, but I do not know to what degree. According to the most recent figures available on unemployment in urban centres, Jonquière/Chicoutimi, or the Ville Saguenay area, is the urban centre where the unemployment rate is the highest in the country. This is related to the softwood lumber issue, because there are many workers in that sector in the whole Saguenay region.
I do not have official figures for the riding of Roberval. However, I have travelled around the riding over the past two weeks and there are almost no plants operating at full capacity, if we consider that those operating almost at capacity have, for the most part, cut back their logging operations. It has to be understood that a whole process is involved, and so when a crisis hits one end of it, the first thing to be cut is production, logging, harvesting and so on, and the plants try to gradually reduce their supplies of wood.
So, already at this point, there is not a single plant in Roberval that has not cut either logging operations or shifts or simply sent workers home or not resumed operations when it normally would.
So we have a terrible situation and I am going to give you an example. In my riding, we have a company that deals with logging trucks, and it has the highest sales in eastern Canada, in the riding of Roberval. I was told it had essentially stopped selling trucks, because logs are no longer being transported. So the market is flooded with logging trucks for sale, logging machinery, harvesters and all sorts of related equipment.
Even a layman can see that this is a terrible tragedy. When one meets with these workers, there is no need to provide them with statistics. When the cry comes from the heart and we are told that there are 15 of them who have not worked at all for six months because of the slowdown in operations, and that they do not expect to work again this year because the sawmills have been hit by the softwood lumber crisis, statistics are irrelevant. Clearly, this is a tragedy.
As for the specific measures, the Bloc Quebecois has tabled a solid document, which I invite the secretary of state to examine.
We are prepared to co-operate, to sit down with them, to supply figures, to contribute. But first, the government must send a signal to the industry—a signal of hope—and say, “Yes, we admit that there is a problem, and we are going to do something to help the industry and workers”.
Once that is done, and party lines are set aside, we can work together and come up with something that will protect people. That is our objective on this side, and I am sure that, in the end, it could be the objective of the secretary of state or of some of the members across the way. All they have to do is get the government on board.