Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-303 which I believe is a nice gesture, a nice thought toward helping forestry workers. I was once a forestry worker. I was a logging contractor for many years before I got into this business.
I know exactly what it means to try to help a forestry worker in his travelling duties. In my case, on a typical day I would spend three and a half or four hours in a pickup truck to get to and from work besides whatever I drove at work. Travelling in the forestry business is an expensive part of the job and there is just no getting around that.
Unfortunately, the problem with the bill is that it addresses one aspect of employee expense. It does not recognize that other employees have similar expenses. For example, construction workers in my area might live in Chilliwack but they have to drive to Vancouver for their daily work. They drive two and a half to three hours a day as well. The bill does not address that. As soon as we start making laws for one group of workers, we have to make it across the board.
The bill tries to address an obvious problem facing the forestry industry. We have to talk about the root of the problem. What are the big problems for forestry workers?
In my neck of the woods there are three or four things that affect them directly. One is the failure to resolve the softwood lumber issue. In British Columbia that issue has caused more dislocation, more unemployment and more problems especially in our rural communities than any other issue. It needs to be resolved. It needs to be resolved at the highest level.
It needs to be a priority for the government or any government to fix and repair our damaged relations with the Americans. We have to get the softwood lumber agreement fixed. I would add that there are several of these agreements, whether it is the problem with BSE, the problem with durum wheat, and now the possible problems with the trading of pork. Many of these are north-south problems with the Americans. We simply have to find a better way of sitting down with our American partners and talking these things through before they become a crisis. Right now we seem to have a crisis management system and it is not helping forestry workers or anyone else.
The government recognized this issue a long time ago. It can be found on the Industry Canada website, the implementation of the softwood industry community economic adjustment initiative. It is a long term for saying there is supposed to be some cash for the communities that are particularly hard hit.
My riding has a new part, and I hope to be the member of Parliament after the next election, but the new riding boundaries go up the valley, up the canyon into Boston Bar and over to Pemberton. I met with officials in those towns. They cannot get any money through the community futures program and through the softwood industry adjustment initiative to the communities that are most affected.
In some cases there is a 70% to 80% unemployment rate. If they could get some money they could start these community forest programs, something which the provincial government is in favour of, but they need some help. The softwood industry adjustment program is supposed to help them and the money is simply not getting through to them.
I refer to an article in the Vancouver Sun of March 6, regarding $55 million of the federal program to assist B.C.'s hardest hit communities, forestry communities, small communities such as the ones in my riding. It states:
But a series of bureaucratic mistakes, changes in rules, turf wars and a confusing array of approval processes all combined to delay the program so much that it was only this week--a month before all the money was supposed to be handed out--that the first small amount approved for programs has trickled out of the government.
In other words, half of all the money in the federal government's softwood lumber initiative was supposed to go to British Columbia, which was the hardest hit. The money would help the smaller communities, such as Boston Bar, Hope, Pemberton, Lillooet and so on, which have already been hit hard for a bunch of reasons. However the government has not been able to design that program for a variety of reasons to get the money into the hands of the people who need it, which is a travesty.
The people have firm proposals. They showed me those proposals again last week when I was up in Boston Bar. Their programs are detailed and firm and have the approval of the bank, the community, their elected official and the province but they cannot get the money from the federal government.
The money was targeted especially to help those communities and it is just a shame when nothing happens. It is not acceptable, especially when it targets one region in the country that needs a little bit of help. The program is on the website but my people back home are saying that they cannot get access to it. Those funds, more so than a travelling allowance, is what these people need.
I would suggest that the other thing we should consider here is the whole employment insurance program. Not only does the employment insurance program consistently overtax people who are in the forest industry, but when they are laid off due to softwood taxation and tariffs and so on, it sometimes takes months and months to get their first EI cheque.
No one wants to live on EI. It is tough enough to live on EI when one is raising a family and so on but when people are paying into that program they expect and have the right to get that money back from the EI program, to quote the Deputy Prime Minister, in a “timely fashion”. When they apply they should not have to wait two to three months to get their first cheque. In our neck of the woods when workers are laid off for winter or because the mill shut down or whatever, there is no question that they are laid off. There is no other work in Boston Bar. It is a one industry town.
When workers who are laid off make their application, they sometimes wait for two to three months before they get a cheque in the mail. That is unacceptable. Not only are employers and employees overtaxed on the EI contributions, but when the workers try to draw from the fund, which is supposed to be for a temporary loss of job, they sometimes do not receive the money for a couple of months.
I have had people come to my office who are at wits end. They do not know what to do. They thought the program would tide them through the winter or maybe put some groceries on the table, and even if they could not pay their mortgage they thought they could somehow survive, but all of a sudden they find they have to wait two or three months for a cheque.
When people are living paycheque to paycheque in an industry that is open and closed, like the forestry industry, two months without any income in a one industry town, is cruel and unusual punishment. It is just not acceptable. I suggest the government look at its management of the EI system as well.
Is there a better way to help forestry workers overall? I do not believe we can just target one group of people and help with their travel expenses. If we are considering that, then we must include the forestry workers, the construction workers, the people who have to follow the jobs like my dad, who passed away, used to do. We would have to do the same thing for those in the oil patch and many different occupations. It is not like working at an auto plant in Oshawa where one knows the plant is right there and it is not moving anywhere. It is a different kettle of fish.
I believe we have to address this thing holistically. It means broadly based tax relief for all Canadians who are looking for some help. We want to specifically help people on their personal income tax, allowing them to reduce the amount of taxes paid. We need to stop the gouging in the EI system. We need to ensure that the money goes to the people who need it in a way that helps them out properly.
We want to restore proper relations with the Americans on these important tariff related border issues. By all means we can get tough when we are talking to the Americans but let us not get silly with the bad mouthing that I hear all too often in Canada toward our American friends and people who buy our goods and so on. Let us fix that.
Finally, we need to make sure that the funds that are supposed to get to the workers and these communities through the WED, through the community futures program that administers it, actually get to them. It is not good enough to say that the funds should have come, that we wish they had not been held up in the pipeline. These people need the help they were promised by the federal government. The program is in place. Let us make sure the money gets through to the workers who really need it today.