With the deal or without the deal.
Instead, do we have a free trade agreement? No. Do we have a fair trade agreement? No. We have a very limited market in which we are now expected to compete. If the market in the U.S. drops to any degree, and with the present housing starts it looks like the market is going down, we will be facing even higher tariffs.
What did we give up for that? We are being asked to give up the legal victories that we built up over the years. The present Prime Minister is not being honest with the Canadian public if he expects us to believe that we would have had seven more years of legal wrangling, that we had to get a deal in place in order to get some peace. The fact is we were within our final two appeals. Once we were at that point, there was no turning back.
Why has the forestry industry not capitulated at this point? The government has had a gun to their heads, yet some of them are still holding out because they know that if they give up on these legal rights that they won in court, then they have nothing.
These are the overall facts of the case, but it is important now to really speak about the new level the government has gone to in terms of its puzzling attitude toward our forestry industry. It is not enough that the Conservatives sat down and signed over everything that we had on our side to get a quick deal. With Conservatives I guess we expect them to do that. We have a long history of Conservatives selling out the national interests, so that would not be a surprise. What is surprising here is that they are acting in a predatory fashion against our own companies. This is unprecedented. Let us look at some of the clauses.
Instead of the 10% softwood duty, we are now being asked as Parliament to impose a 15% duty on our own companies. That is supposed to be a deal. On top of that, we are now looking at a government that is adding an extra punitive charge against companies that are still standing up for their own interests. We are being asked as parliamentarians to go after financially the companies that are not buckling under to the government's deal.
That is an unprecedented situation. I do not think we could see in history any other example of a government coming before Parliament and saying that it wanted to punish, to financially attack, our own industry, and this is after a period of major economic crisis. That we are being asked as parliamentarians to target our own industry is a puzzling betrayal.
Clause 10 imposes the 15% export duty as soon as the deal is signed. That is a double taxation above and beyond the existing anti-dumping countervailing duties.
Clause 18 imposes a special punitive tax that is designed to go after the companies that are standing up. If this special tax is in place, companies will be paying 37%. That is not the U.S. fair lumber lobby wanting to bring this in, it is our own Conservative government to force compliance.
Again we have to put this in perspective. We know of the financial drain that has been put on our industries because of the softwood crisis. What the government is saying is that if those companies stand up to the government, they will be facing financial ruin. Because of the limited margins that are left within our Canadian bank accounts for forestry, we are going to have our own government going after them.
On top of that, clause 48 would require a six year burden of record keeping on these companies.
Clause 77 states that the government does not even need a warrant to enter softwood businesses to ensure that our own companies are complying. We have our own government acting against the interests of our industry.
Clause 89 gives the government the right to demand a blank cheque from any of these companies to pay up immediately. A Canadian forestry company that is trying to stand up for its best interests and has not knuckled under to the government's deal, what kind of success is it going to have when it is renegotiating its loans at the bank, when the banks know that their own Government of Canada can come in, check the books and go after them?
The Conservatives pushed this deal. I can understand that. Some of the Liberal members from northern Ontario are supporting this deal. I cannot understand that, in particular in regions where our industry is facing such a severe crisis. What astounds me is that members of the Bloc Québécois are supporting this deal. That is the party that stood in this House and denied motions to get pesticide bans across Canada because it might interfere with Quebec. That is the party that has undermined child care plans for the rest of Canada because it somehow might interfere with the jurisdiction in Quebec. Yet when we look at a bill that would allow the United States government to set forestry policy within Quebec, that is okay. When we look at a bill that allows the federal government to target Quebec companies and go into their businesses and check on their compliance and charge them if they are not going along, that is perfectly fine for the Bloc.
This world seems as if it is turned upside down. We are being asked in Parliament to turn against our own industries and our own communities. This is an unacceptable situation. We need to have it on the record that this deal is one of the most venal and pusillanimous arrangements ever brought before Parliament. On behalf of the forestry, softwood, pulp workers in northern Ontario, I will never support a deal as craven as this one.