Mr. Speaker, there is a famous song that asks, if I had a million dollars, what would I do with a million dollars? I want the House to think about what we would do if we had $1 billion. It is really quite tragic that Canada caved in at a moment of strength, given that international rulings continued to land firmly on our side.
This deal will kill the NAFTA process which has favoured Canada's position and forfeited at least $1 billion plus hundreds of millions dollars more in interest that would have come our way had our negotiators hung tough.
On April 7 the United States Court of International Trade ruled that the U.S. industry was entitled legally to no money, not a penny, none of it. Well, 20 days later the U.S. coalition was offered a deal to take $500 million. Of course they said yes. Of course they would want the $500 million because they were not entitled to one penny and yet they got $500 million. That is a really good deal for them.
Second, the net present value at the end of April was not the same as it was at Christmas especially as the pot kept growing. We talked about the $500 million but there was more. Actually, $450 million would go to some kind of meritorious initiatives in the United States. Why? How? Why is Canada providing foreign aid to the United States? Is the United States poor? Is it desperate? Is it in need of financial support? Are U.S. citizens suffering from AIDS and have no funds to pay for medication? Maybe the people are poor, but the government is not poor. Are the Americans suffering from bad water, dirty water, and they have no funds to clean their water? They must be desperate. That is probably why our minister gave $450 million directly to the President, not to congress. I do not quite understand it. This is a lot of money.
Not only is the $500 million going to the coalition, but it is Canadian money that is going to the President himself. Congress will not be involved in any way with this agreement. The Government of Canada is making a gift of $450 million to the President of the U.S. Perhaps this is the price of friendship between Canadian prime ministers and U.S. presidents. It is not the first time.
We have a nasty habit of prime ministers wanting to do everything to please presidents of the United States of America. Last year in the summer I recall that the former prime minister committed Canadian troops to go south in Afghanistan just before he visited the United States President. This time we are giving the Americans $1 billion.
The U.S. consumer lobby was shocked by this deal. The American consumer group could not believe it. American consumers for affordable homes claims to represent 95% of U.S. lumber consumption. It is especially shocked by the fact that $1 billion of the $5 billion collected by the U.S. government will not be returned to Canada despite the fact that we kept winning all the trade deals in the courts. That lobby group reports that $1 billion will be put into two funds and the lobby cites statistics of the U.S. census bureau that show that higher lumber prices will result because the tariffs have priced 300,000 Americans out of the market for new homes. That is also the impact of this agreement.
Imagine what we could do with $1 billion. I asked students just a few minutes ago and they said it would be really useful to invest in some training programs.
What about some English language training for new migrant workers? What about helping some new immigrants to get certification and employment opportunities in areas of need, such as nurses, doctors, et cetera, especially in our northern communities and communities where a lot of lumber is being cut and where there is a lot of unemployment. It would be wonderful to have some money for training.
It would also be wonderful if there was some money for transportation and infrastructure in order to reduce energy costs, perhaps some community centres for young people, or some grants for arts and culture and some workshops.
Within three minutes the students were able to think of at least seven to eight different ways on how to spend the billion dollars. It is so sad knowing how many forestry workers have lost their jobs recently. As I said earlier, in Quebec alone almost 10,000 forestry workers have lost their jobs in recent years. Will they get any of this $1 billion? No, because this $1 billion has gone completely to the United States.
We know that because of this deal we will have significant job losses. Why? Because this deal will discourage Canadian value added production. It will stimulate raw log exports rather than having the logs dealt with here and creating jobs in Canada. This deal does nothing to protect that. Because of the quotas and export taxes producers will not be hiring workers back if they do not see any room for expansion in the future.
The Québec Forest Industry Council said that there will be massive restructuring or layoffs. The Ontario Forest Industry Association said that there will be shuttered mills and unemployment, and that about 20% of the mills could close as a result of the policies of this government.
This deal is bad for the industry. It is bad for Canadian taxpayers. It is bad for a lot of towns and it is certainly not good for this government to accept it.
Last, it is fatally flawed because there is no democratic process. As I said earlier, there was no process where the majority of these companies were consulted. Certainly, most of the companies that must now pay this tariff were not consulted. Only the very big companies and a percentage of the 300 small businesses were consulted, the rest were not.
I urge members to take a close look at this and vote with their hearts and not support this deal.