Yes, perhaps he has written an article somewhere. I would like to see him sit down with the stakeholders, with the members of the House of Commons and lay out a plan.
There is another point. The Minister of Natural Resources said that he would announce an energy strategy, energy framework, call it what he will, that would lay out the federal position. At least we could have a dialogue within Canada about the energy challenges and the energy opportunities that we are facing in the future.
He told us at committee that this would be available in the fall. He would have done it sooner, but he wanted a quality product. I am sure the minister would know, maybe not by walking around here in Ottawa, but in Victoria, where he comes from, in Saanich, that fall is probably over and we are still waiting for this energy strategy.
At the same time, the minister talks about the need to conserve energy and to become more energy efficient, and I am with him 100% on that. We all understand that there are so many ways that we could become more energy efficient. At the same time as he says that, he scraps programs that are working like the EnerGuide retrofit program for houses, which was producing energy efficiencies of about 30% per home.
He also puts on hold, freezes, cuts, whatever, and the language he uses sometimes is totally vague, but the wind power production incentive program is a program that was helping many producers to put in wind power. Wind power, while not a panacea, has some great potential, especially in provinces like Quebec. My colleagues down the way will understand that very well. Wind power fits very well with hydro-electric power because it is able to work off the peaks and valleys of the production. What does that minister do? He says no to wind power production incentive programs and that he will revisit that. He has been revisiting these programs for 9 or 10 months and we are still waiting.
I could go on and on and I will go on and on. I had an opportunity in my previous life to visit Thetford Mines. I had a client there, actually, a company that had automotive interests, metallurgy and also an engineering capability. It is a quaint little town. I think that while we cannot justify the production and sale of asbestos, if it is hazardous to health, we also need to think very carefully about the people whose lives and livelihood depend on it.
We should be very careful when we say that something is carcinogenic. There are a lot of things, unfortunately, in our society that are carcinogenic. While car fumes have been improved, they are surely carcinogenic. We are taking a lot of measures to reduce the incidence of smoking and secondhand smoke but that too is carcinogenic. Do we ban smoking? Do we ban Bavarian sausages. They are probably carcinogenic as well. I am not trying to trivialize this because I know the member for Winnipeg Centre feels very deeply about it, but we need to be very careful in this particular area.
The member for Winnipeg Centre wants to cut the $250,000 that go to the Chrysotile Institute. There are $250,000 annually that come from the province of Quebec and $250,000 come from the industry. That money is used for research and ensuring that the industry communicates very clearly to countries and the domestic market what some of the risks are of chrysotile asbestos.
There are risks, there is no denying that, but I would contend that with the proper application and controlled environment, chrysotile asbestos can be and is being used in a safe way. Does that mean that we sell it abroad without any sort of information? Of course not. That is why cutting the $250,000 would be a mistake. It would be a very big mistake.
Coming back to the minister, how did he defend forestry communities on softwood lumber? We know the position of the Minister of International Trade. He got his instructions from the Prime Minister when he returned from Cancun. The deal was that the government was going to work something out on the passport issue, which, by the way, we are still waiting for, and negotiate a deal on softwood lumber.
Why would Canada negotiate on softwood lumber when it has been winning every single appeal through the NAFTA and all the objective panels? If we have to cave in on softwood lumber, what are we going to do later with steel or any other product? We have set a horrible precedent with this bill. That is why the minister should have spoken to the motion before the House.
How did the Minister of Natural Resources defend forestry communities in Canada because this has huge consequences? The reality is that the Minister of Natural Resources, who I think was probably like the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and out of the loop on this one, should have been asserting the interests of forestry communities across Canada saying that he could not tell them in good conscience that the government was going to pull the rug out from under them and give them no financial support if they did not agree to the softwood lumber deal. That is essentially what happened. The government put a gun to their heads and said that if they did not sign off on the softwood lumber agreement, it would not be supporting them any more.
The reality is that the Liberal government supported the forestry industry through thick and thin on all the countervailing duty actions. The industry in real terms cannot fight that big U.S. machine without the support of the federal government.
What were the forest products companies supposed to do? They had a gun to their heads. They said they believed they had a case to fight it through the NAFTA and won every single independent panel, but the Conservative government was saying it was going to pull the rug out from underneath them and they were on their own if they did not sign off on this deal.
The other thing is that the softwood lumber deal calls for the companies to drop their lawsuits and then sign on to this agreement, but the other hook is that the U.S. producers in two or three years time can argue in front of the U.S. administration that they do not like the deal any longer and can renege on the deal. In the meantime, the forest products companies have signed off on their rights with their lawsuits.
I would have liked to have seen the Minister of Natural Resources stand up for forestry communities. I would have liked to have seen the Minister of Natural Resources come out with a package that we, as a Liberal government, had committed to, a $1.5 billion package. In today's terms it would probably be more. It would have helped them with bridge financing. It would have helped the industry with the labour adjustment. It would have helped the industry in terms of innovation and would have helped the industry in converting energy.
Energy is a big problem for the forest industries. We would have helped them convert their biomass into electricity to feed their mills and maybe even feed the grid, and deal with this very significant problem.
We have seen pulp mills and saw mills across Canada close with regularity. Where has the Minister of Minister of Natural Resources been? I have not seen him defending forestry communities and it seems to me that this is his job.
We have seen the mining industry and the forest industry tell the government, tell people like myself, tell other colleagues in this House, that they are facing huge labour shortages. We are not talking about a few people here and there. We are talking about thousands of labour shortages in these industries. I suppose young people are deciding to go into other careers; I am not exactly sure. I know that one part of it is an aging workforce, coupled with maybe some lesser interest by young people to go into the forestry and mining industries.
We need a plan. What does the Minister of Natural Resources do? He goes to China and tries to sell uranium. I am not sure what he is doing, but he is not here. He is not defending the interests of forestry communities and he is not defending natural resource communities across Canada, maybe 400 communities across Canada whose livelihood depends on the natural resource economy.
We tend to think of our economy as high tech. Actually, a lot of the high tech is in the natural resource economy. This minister should stay on subject. When he comes into the House, he should deal with the issue on the floor, however uncomfortable that is, and he should deal with the issues facing Canadians in the natural resource sector.