Mr. Chair, I am pleased to participate in this debate this evening on the softwood lumber dispute with the United States. This is an important debate and an important issue for the people of British Columbia, my home province, and the people of my riding of Burnaby--Douglas.
Burnaby--Douglas is not home to a significant part of the lumber industry in B.C. but folks in Burnaby--Douglas know the importance of that industry to our province, communities in the interior, Vancouver Island, the coast, and the thousands of workers in British Columbia.
They know that we are intimately connected with their success and their ability to participate in this important industry. They know that in British Columbia we have lost over 20,000 jobs because of this dispute. They know that $4 million a day is bled from our economy because of this dispute. They know that is not good for them, for British Columbia or for Canada. They also know that this dispute is so important that continued inaction cannot be tolerated.
There has been a long series of clear decisions in Canada's favour. NAFTA includes a binding dispute settlement mechanism. That was negotiated as part of the deal. It was signed off by both Canada and the United States. It is binding. It was set up to be binding on the signatories. That is what is not happening at this point in this discussion.
The debate in the House in the last few days has been truly bizarre. We have heard the Liberals declare over and over again that NAFTA must be respected. We have heard that phrase constantly. It is the mantra of the trade minister that NAFTA must be respected. Every answer practically includes that phrase.
The Prime Minister, at his press conference yesterday, said in a very grave voice that NAFTA has spoken. That is all well and good, but what does it really mean? Repeating it over and over is not going to make it happen.
Yes, NAFTA has spoken and spoken clearly in terms of support for Canada's position, but the reality is that the Bush administration has spoken as well and it has said, “We could care less what NAFTA says. We could care less about Canada's position. We're not conceding. We're not repaying the illegal duties collected on Canadian lumber”.
Let us talk about respect. The people of Burnaby--Douglas and most Canadians know lack of respect when they see it. They see it very clearly in the actions of the Bush administration to not live up to the provisions of its agreement with Canada.
Canadians know a lack of self-respect when they see it. They see it in the failure of the Liberal government to stand up for this country. The inaction of the Liberals is ultimately seen as a sign of lack of self-respect. Either the Liberals believe that we are right and that we are standing on firm ground or they do not. To continue to negotiate, to continue all of these other talks, to continue with phone calls, and to have advocacy plans is an indication that they do not believe that we are right.
What has the Liberal government actually done? There has been lots of talk. There has been lots of spin, but no action. There was that famous phone call and we heard about it tonight. We keep hearing justifications for the phone call that the Prime Minister finally made to George Bush, the phone call that took weeks to actually get organized and be made.
Last week in the House we were debating the do not call list bill which is about unwanted telemarketing calls. In that debate I suggested that there were a number of do not call lists in the Liberal government offices. There was clearly one in the Prime Minister's Office that delayed and delayed that call to President Bush. Do not call lists seem to exist and they seem to exist in the Prime Minister's Office. A phone call is just not enough. It is just not an appropriate response. It was too little, too late, and it appears that it was totally ineffective.
What does the NDP propose instead? We were clear in August just after this final binding decision was made. The NDP had a three point plan and we have made that clear since August. Back in August we called on the Prime Minister to recall Parliament. We were prepared to come back from our summer work in the constituencies and our holidays last August because we understood the urgency of this issue. We were prepared to get back to work on this issue. We were prepared to debate this issue in August, not October. It seems to have taken months to get this on the agenda of the House.
Second, NDP said that we should stop the deep integration negotiations, the further negotiations that we were having with the United States around integrating our approaches to things like food safety, air safety and security. There is no excuse for going further down that road when the U.S. does not play by the rules we have already negotiated with it.
Third, we said we would impose an energy levy and lay down some export duties on our oil exports to the United States. We know that we are now its largest oil supplier, having replaced Saudi Arabia.
Those were three concrete actions that we believed would have gotten the attention of the Americans and indicated that we were serious about standing up for this decision and our country. We did that because we understood the importance of strong leadership on this matter. We know that weakness will only see us taken advantage of further. This week an Ipsos Reid poll confirmed that Canadians agree with our suggestions and agree with them overwhelmingly.
I want to note the order here. Unlike other parties, my party's leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth, took a strong stand, put forward a clear plan of action, and showed leadership. Later, the polling showed that Canadians agreed with us. Far too often in this place it is the other way around, where the government continuously polls to find out what people are thinking and then acts in light of that.
The polling last week showed that 80% of British Columbians support taking action in the form of imposing an energy levy. Overall, that poll showed that 77% of Canadians, a majority in every region of the country, supported restricting energy exports to the U.S. if Washington did not back down.
Canadians are prepared to take that risk and they know there is a risk involved. Canadians understand the challenges of living next door to the United States, but they do not want more negotiations. They want the agreement to be honoured. They want the dispute settlement mechanism and its decision respected.
They do not want to send a special envoy, as the Conservatives suggest, because to negotiate when we won would be wrong. To negotiate further new arrangements, as the Conservatives suggest, with the folks who do not respect the current arrangements would be wrong.
Canadians do not want the Prime Minister to look for signs that the U.S. is willing to abide by NAFTA. They do not want the Prime Minister looking for hints or reading between the lines or interpreting American statements optimistically.
Canadians want the government to have the courage of its convictions and the convictions of Canadians on this issue, and hold the U.S. to account for the $5 billion in illegal duties it has collected from Canada, and for the damage it has done to our communities and economy. Canadians want us to hold the U.S. to the agreement it signed with us and they want us to get on with that now.
I want to digress for just a moment to speak about another international agreement that the U.S. is not upholding. I had the pleasure, as did the member for Yukon, last night of seeing the film Being Caribou . It is the story of the porcupine caribou herd that is endangered by U.S. plans to drill for oil on the calving grounds in northern Alaska.
In the panel following the film, the member for Yukon noted that the U.S. was refusing to appoint its representatives to the joint herd management council established by a treaty between Canada and the U.S. It is doing this at a time when perhaps even later this week the U.S. Congress will pass legislation to give the go-ahead to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Again, there is that question of respect for agreements between Canada and the U.S. and another example of the lack of respect that the Bush administration shows for its treaties with Canada. I appreciate that the government is taking a strong stand on this issue, but at some point when the very survival of the herd is in question, that talk will look very cheap. I want to pay tribute to the member for Yukon for the work he has done on this, but we need to move it to the next level where we actually hold Americans accountable for the agreements they have signed with us.
The time for talk is long past on softwood lumber. The government has to get it together. It has to show some leadership. It has to show the Americans that we are serious about the agreements that we sign with them. Canadians want nothing less than that.