Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has been refusing to launch a specific action plan to defend tens of thousands of Canadian workers from losing their jobs and homes because of the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute.
The government says it is afraid the American lumber lobby will accuse them of subsidizing the industry. This same lobby is a handful of wealthy lumber barons working to pump up the price of wood in the United States. They will lose the case that Canada is bringing against them at both the WTO and NAFTA.
Because the U.S. is using the wrong criteria to judge the threat posed by Canada's lumber, the government should go ahead and protect Canadian workers and their families instead of running scared. The longer the government sits on its hands, the higher the risk that individual provinces will try to work deals with the U.S. saying that Ottawa is making no progress and they cannot wait.
The international trade minister is risking the solidarity of Canada's position by letting softwood lumber communities suffer. The government does not care about the pain, suffering and loss being imposed upon forestry workers throughout British Columbia and Canada.