Debates of Nov. 29th, 2006

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Question No. 105

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

With regard to the Tomorrow Starts Today program in the Department of Canadian Heritage: (a) what has been the total spending amount under the program since 2001; (b) how much of this total has been spent in each of the provinces; and (c) what is the per capita amount of spending of this program per province?

(Return tabled)

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Motions for Papers

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all notices of motions for the production of papers be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from November 22 consideration of Bill C-24, An Act to impose a charge on the export of certain softwood lumber products to the United States and a charge on refunds of certain duty deposits paid to the United States, to authorize certain payments, to amend the Export and Import Permits Act and to amend other Acts as a consequence, as reported with amendment from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 2.

Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this issue again because as New Democrats we have been speaking out about this issue for some time.

I would like to bring to the House's attention that I was in Thunder Bay earlier this week where I met with people from the ridings of Thunder Bay—Superior North and Thunder Bay—Rainy River because of the announcement that was made just this past week by Bowater at its Kraft mill. On the very day that the provincial Liberals announced an electricity rebate for northern mills, Bowater was telling its employees and their families that it was demanding the right to reopen contracts, demand concessions and that the future of Bowater was on the line.

That was on the same day that Tembec Timmins went down. Tembec Timmins is fundamental in the softwood industry in our region. That was also the same day that the provincial Liberal minister, David Ramsay, told the people of northern Ontario not to worry, that they had gotten off scot-free. He was sounding somewhat like the Marie Antoinette of the forestry industry at that point.

I went to Thunder Bay to meet with the employees of Bowater because Thunder Bay was supposed to have been on the list of communities for hearings on softwood. A promise was made by parliamentarians at the committee that they would have hearings across Canada, from one end of the country to other, to hear from the people who were being affected because certain key communities will definitely take the brunt of the legislation if it goes forward. Thunder Bay is certainly one of those communities where the people were very upset when they heard that the hearings were cancelled. The committee cancelled the hearings with the help of the Liberal members, unfortunately, because the Liberal members of Thunder Bay stand up alongside the Prime Minister and give this deal the big two thumbs up. They sold out the people of northern Ontario on this and I, in no way, can allow this to go unrecorded because this is an issue where we need the people of northern Ontario to stand together.

I would like to reiterate some issues in case some members are not quite aware of the impacts of this deal and what it will mean for the forest dependent regions of the north, and particularly northern Ontario which I represent.

The first issue is the process that was entertained in this deal going forward. It was very clear that the government was interested in a quick photo op. It wanted a dirty deal done dirt cheap and done quickly so it could turn around and show back to the electorate and say that in its little check box of things that the Conservative government accomplished it finally dealt with the softwood deal. However, to get a deal done dirt cheap and done dirt quickly, it basically had to concede everything to the U.S. trade competition.

Our government did not seem to have a problem with that. It sat down and carved out a deal where basically we gave away every right that we had won in court decision after court decision in terms of defending our rights to maintain a free and open market in wood. The government came back here thinking that industry would sign on. Industry did not sign on. Industry was deeply opposed to the deal because there are number of elements in the deal that will affect the long term viability of industry in northern Ontario for years to come.

First is the fact that we were asked to agree to a crippled market and if that market starts to grow the tariffs start to come on again.

Second, our companies are having to give up the legal rights that they fought for and won.

Third, we will be taking money that belonged to our producers and giving it to the United States. It is a billion-plus dollars, and of that, $450 million goes to our direct competitors. Here , in Canada where we have had community after community impacted, mills going down and a need for government retraining, restructuring and commitment to help the industry get on its feet, there is no money. There is no money for Red Rock, Dryden, Thunder Bay, Opasatika and Smooth Rock Falls but our competitors in the United States are using our money to retool.

We had our direct competitors who, after years of fighting the softwood deal, were pretty much at the end of their road and they did not have any money left in their pockets. Now they are flush with cash.

Bowater is an American company in Thunder Bay. Like many of our companies now, Bowater started out as a family operation. It could have been Great Lakes Paper. It could have been, in my region, Malette and McChesney, who were bought out and have become larger and larger corporations, further and further from the source. Many of these corporations now have operations in the southern United States and in the north.

When we talk to people within the industry, it becomes very clear as to where they will be putting their investment dollars. They will not be investing in the forest industries of Canada right now because there is no incentive to do so. Will they invest in Georgia? We can bet they will. Will they invest in South Carolina? They are already doing that and they will be using the money from our producers to retool their plants south of the border. It is an outrageous situation.

What is so disturbing about this deal is that another aspect to this would have come out in hearings in the amendment stages had the other parties not tried to silence the amendment process by limiting 60 seconds per amendment. These are amendments that will have profound impacts.

What we are being asked to do in this House of Parliament is to use the power of the Government of Canada to act as a predator on one of our primary industries. The forestry sector in Ontario is about the second largest industry in Ontario. We are being asked to go after our own producers because our producers have been efficient and they have used their resources well. In northern Ontario we have managed our forests well. We have a bountiful harvest of trees. We have a good system for bringing that forward and a public system but we are being asked to impose tariffs. We are putting a punishment tax on our own industry in order to placate Washington.

What is an even more outrageous predatory aspect of this deal is that our government is insisting on a further punishment tax for the companies that are holding our their legal rights, rights they have fought for year after year in court decisions. The government will impose a further punishment tariff on them.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I wonder whose side they are on.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Exactly. It is a question of whose side the government is on. In this financial climate that we are in, we are not kidding around. Many long-standing Canadian industries are almost at the end of their ropes. They were asking for financial aid but that aid never came. Now, for the companies that have signed on, the first money that is flowing is actually taxpayer money. It is money coming from the EDC to the companies that have signed on.

We were asking for that money to flow ages ago in order to allow our companies the lines of credit they needed to give them some breathing space until we could get through the final court challenge on October 13.

Those are some of the key areas that need to be looked at when we talk about this softwood agreement. They have profound implications for the forestry-dependent communities of our regions. It is hard to tell people in Smooth Rock Falls, Opasatika or Red Rock to reinvent themselves without a mill and become entrepreneurs. We have been through this in northern Ontario. We had the great adjustment committees that took a way of life and put people into a sunset life.

I have seen what it has done to communities after people are told there is no future for them and that the committee will not work with them on economic development opportunities. The best the committee said it would do was to give them some re-education. I remember the committee doing that when our mining sector was going down. What did that re-education give anyone? It taught the men in the mining sector, those who ran skidders, machines and the jacklight drills, how to play solitaire on computers assuming that somehow would allow them to reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs in the dot-com age.

However, that never happened because in northern Ontario, as much as we try to develop into other sectors, we remain fundamentally based on the resources of the north, on the hydro, on the forestry and on the mineral production. Those are the fundamentals on which we build an economy. What we are seeing with this deal is absolutely no incentive to go to value added because we are agreeing to impose an export tariff on the value of the product that is created. Therefore, if we are creating value added in northern Ontario, we are paying more for it.

Why would a company do that work in the north when it can do it south of the border and get the benefits from a government that has agreed to act in a predatory fashion against its own members?

I have met with people in communities across the north, with industry officials and with union people. As New Democrats, we remain absolutely opposed to this deal, not just because it is a bad deal for Canada but because of what it says about the government's willingness to sell out our domestic industrial sector from coast to coast to coast.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of questions for the member because I am concerned that he continues to ignore the facts.

First, we know that the softwood lumber dispute has gone through 24 years of litigation and the last lawsuit for five years alone. Without this deal, the U.S. lumber coalition has told us very clearly, not only through the public and news releases but very verbally, that there will be another lawsuit without this deal. Why does the hon. member continue to ignore that with a new lawsuit there will be new countervailing duties and new anti-dumping duties, which could total 27%?

I also want to point out that the trade committee was one of only two committees that sat throughout the summer. We heard from witnesses, not once, not twice, but many of them had three opportunities to come before us. Why is the member deliberately misleading the House when it comes to the number of times the committee has heard from witnesses?

I also want to talk about the fact that the deal will provide stability and predictability for 7 to 9 years, that 90% of the--

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is very unfair to say that I would be deliberately misleading the House. I would like the hon. member to retract that. That is very unparliamentary.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Simcoe—Grey has heard the point of order and the chair occupant has also heard the allegation. I know she will do the right thing.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the hon. member has not been on the committee so he would not know that we did in fact sit throughout the summer and had an opportunity to hear from many witnesses. He obviously was not there. Deliberately? No, because he was not sitting on the committee. However, now he knows witnesses had ample opportunity to come before the committee. Hopefully, he will remember that in the future.

Why does the hon. member and his colleague, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, continue to stand onside with the lobbyist lawyers, who they have dragged before committee over and over again? They are the only ones who have won with litigation and they are only ones who will win if this deal does not succeed.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if I had a question like, I would wear a bag over my head. She is telling us the U.S. lumber lobby will come back after us and hurt us. What should we do? Roll over and give it everything it wants so it will leave us alone? What kind of government policy is that? Of course it will come after us. It comes after us in steel, it comes after us in wheat and it comes after us in hogs. The job of the government is to stand up to it, not back down.

Then she said that I did not realize the committee heard from people. It did not hear from the people being affected. To talk about us standing with lobbyists, when that member will not go out to the communities to meet the workers and the people in the industry who are affected, is a joke. Talk about standing with the lobbyists; she is standing with the U.S. lobbyists.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite interesting to hear the member for Timmins—James Bay talk about what he did and what he could do. The fact is, as a member of the fourth party of the House, there is not much he can do.

He had an opportunity to support some of the work the Liberals did. He talked about a deal for training and cogeneration plants for communities to ensure they could deal with high hydro costs. He talked about research and technology to ensure that companies could move forward, and he wanted support for all that.

He got all that in a forestry package that the Liberals put together. His answer will be that we did it at the very last moment. He knows that is not the case. I announced it would be within six months and we were within two weeks of doing that.

Would he sooner have the deal that Liberals proposed, which was something and it would be on the ground, or would he sooner have the softwood deal we have now?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I find the member's use of math interesting. Six months before the election, we were meeting with the mayors of northwestern Ontario, who were in Ottawa. We were talking with them and asking the Liberal government to give us a signal. We never heard a peep.

I cannot remember the Liberals ever promising this big package until the eve of the election when they pulled out the big deathbed red book and crammed in all the promises that they had never delivered year after year. They pulled it out and said that if Canadians gave them one more term, if they were re-elected them, they would help all the little children around the world and they would give them all the stuff they never gave them before. No wonder Canadians never fell for that.

When he talks about high—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak again about Bill C-24, this time as part of the review of the second group of amendments proposed following the clause-by-clause study of the bill in committee.

I would like to begin by commenting on what was said by my colleague, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, whom I have the great pleasure to work with on the Standing Committee on International Trade and whose competence I value.

Sometimes, we have similar opinions. At other times, we disagree, on issues such as the recognition of Quebec as a nation or how attentive the Bloc Québécois is to the needs of our industries and unions.

Since the debates began in this House, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster has said several times that he and his party have consulted representatives of the industry and forestry workers on numerous occasions to hear their objections to Bill C-24.

However, we in the Bloc Québécois have also consulted industry representatives and workers in Quebec. They have asked us to support this agreement, because the industry has been brought to its knees by the constraints that have been imposed on it for so many years. That is why we support this agreement.

We must not forget that from the very beginning of this long and difficult conflict four years ago, despite the Bloc Québécois' many questions and its pressure on them, both the Conservative and Liberal governments refused to take action in this House to ensure better financial health for our forest industry and stable jobs for thousands of workers.

The Liberal and Conservative governments forgot—or probably chose to forget—one major thing: the importance of preparing a plan to support the forest industry and forestry sector workers by, for example, establishing a loan guarantees program to help some of them avoid bankruptcy. But despite multi-billion dollar surpluses, neither government did or is doing anything to support our industries.

Unfortunately, for more than 40 months, the Liberals stubbornly refused to provide any kind of assistance program and the Conservatives, who probably wanted to prove that they could be just as obstinate as the Liberals, decided to take the same approach.

Sometimes, when we put forward proposals to help our Quebec industries, we hear them laughing. The Liberals were stubborn. However, the Conservatives' refusal is not surprising. We know that in terms of economics, they prefer a laissez-faire ideology. They are not aware that their vision is doing a lot of damage to our forest industry.

During the last election campaign, the Conservative leader stated several times that he would help the forest industry by providing loan guarantees. The Conservatives made a commitment. They promised to support the industry with loan guarantees. After the election, they did not keep their promises about an independent employment insurance fund, the fiscal imbalance, or an assistance program for older workers, to name just a few.

Subsequently, the Prime Minister signed an agreement with his new friend, President Bush—an agreement that gave away $1 billion in duties illegally collected by our neighbours to the south. He gave President Bush a $1 billion gift. Of that $1 billion, $500 million will go to the American companies that started the conflict in the first place.

It is possible that this money will be used to modernize their companies and even used by these same industries to start a new legal war against the Quebec and Canadian forest industry.

This is an agreement and a bill that we support, but unenthusiastically.

During this entire dispute, it seemed obvious to me that the United States won with their strategy of dragging out litigation as long as possible.

Short on financial resources and abandoned by the Liberals and now the Conservatives, the forest industry was on its last legs and could no longer continue to fight in the courts, even though it won the many cases that were heard.

The industry, without support, asked the Bloc Québécois to recover some of this money that the U.S. government withheld illegally. Yes, illegally, since Washington was never able to show in any court that its companies were adversely affected, or that its claims, that Canadian wood was subsidized, were founded.

Where are we now? Government representatives are saying that the Quebec and Canadian industry is getting its money back, as though this were an unexpected gift to the industry. This money is not a subsidy. This is industry money, only part of which is being recovered. But politics being what it is sometimes, the Conservatives seem to be claiming that they are subsidizing the forest industry with their own money.

A number of times we heard the Minister of Industry and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, with whom I enjoy working, tell us that the return of these duties represents a new cash injection, which will be very beneficial to the softwood lumber industry. There is no cash injection and no program of action to support the industry. It is false to say that this is a gift or a new cash injection since the industry paid this money in countervailing duties. Our industry is only recovering some of the money illegally withheld by Washington.

It is in this context that the industry and representatives of Quebec's forestry workers are reluctantly asking us to support the agreement, that the Bloc Québécois, as the party accountable to these industries, these unions and these constituents, has decided to take this direction.

However, since the beginning of the dispute, it is obvious that we would have preferred the government to support the industry in order to help its workers get through this very difficult period.

With the government's support, this industry could have developed and become more competitive, which would have minimized job losses. But, no, this federal government—whether Conservative or Liberal—chose to do nothing. It apparently did not have the money. It has a surplus of $13 billion, $14 billion or $15 billion, yet it cannot support industries. It says it does not have the means. This has led us to where we are today.

As we have stated repeatedly in recent months, the Bloc Québécois supports this bill because the forest industry and the representatives of workers in Quebec have asked us to support the agreement. The NDP is still questioning us about this, namely, why we support this agreement. We constantly repeat: because we are close to the people who work in our industries and close to our unions. That is why we support this agreement.

However, since the very beginning of the dispute, we have maintained that the government must intervene. We cannot pretend, as the Conservative government maintains, that this agreement will solve all the forest industry's problems.

We know that it will solve very few of them.

As I mentioned, the forest industry has become vulnerable because of the lengthy softwood lumber dispute and it now faces an unprecedented structural crisis.

Clearly, the forest industry has been unable to overcome the tremendous difficulty it has been facing in recent years because of the softwood lumber dispute with the United States.

According to the Quebec Forest Industry Council, more than 7,000 jobs have been permanently or temporarily lost in Quebec since spring 2005. By refusing to act, the Conservatives—like the Liberals—have demonstrated blatant irresponsibility in this file. They must now assume their responsibilities.

If the government is still not convinced that an assistance program is necessary, it need only look at the number of jobs lost. The industry needs a support program, older workers need a support program, and the employment insurance program must be improved. We are waiting for this government to act.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the hon. member that the Prime Minister made a promise and delivered on that promise. He delivered a deal to the softwood lumber industry that he promised during the campaign. This deal is for seven to nine years free of litigation and it returns over $5 billion American to the industry so that it can survive.

I notice that the member has acknowledged today that the previous Liberal government was unable or unwilling to solve this dispute and to give something back to the industry, but surely he is here voting in favour of and supporting the deal. Can he please tell us why he is supporting it? Surely it cannot be as bad as he has suggested. He knows there are some good things in it. He knows that Quebec is supporting it. He knows that the industry in Quebec is supporting it. Perhaps he could enlighten us as to why he has decided to support the deal.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in this House, we have to repeat ourselves endlessly in order for some politicians to understand the reasons why we support or oppose certain measures.

As we mentioned, we asked for a loan guarantee program to support the forestry industry while the trade dispute with the United States was ongoing. The Liberals were ineffective and did nothing. When the Conservatives campaigned in the last election, they said they would support the industries with loan guarantees. When the Conservatives were elected, they forgot about it. They forgot all about it just like they forgot to support the industry. They signed an agreement on July 1 which, unfortunately, meant major losses for the Quebec industry.