Mr. Speaker, in the context of debating Bill C-24 I was using as an example the similar parallel trade irritant of the Canadian Wheat Board. I think there is a connection, enough of a one to allow me to finish my thoughts in that regard, and then I will come quickly to a summary of the NDP's view on why we are opposed to the current softwood lumber agreement deal.
I was trying to explain that the reason the dual desk marketing system will not work for the marketing of Canadian wheat is that if the open market price is higher than the initial payment, the board gets fewer deliveries. If the initial payment is higher than the market, it gets all the deliveries but it has to sell the product at a loss. It simply cannot work.
In the case of both of these examples, both of these major trade irritants between Canada and the United States, the Conservative government feels compelled to roll over and do exactly what the Americans want it to do. The Americans want the government to give up, even in cases where it is close to victory. When it could have in fact delivered a resounding victory in the softwood negotiations, the government chose not to. It bailed out too early. It left too much on the table.
I would like to quote Margaret Atwood and her view in this regard:
It's said the beaver bites off its testicles when threatened. If true, the beaver is certainly an apt symbol, if not for Canada, certainly for a succession of governments which, when faced with ceaseless bullying, react by carving off pieces of the nation.
That is, carving off our own independence, and I think the words of Margaret Atwood are very prescient and very wise in this regard.
Let me tell members one specific thing. Above and beyond leaving $450 million on the table for the Bush administration, and $500 million that goes directly to the American softwood lumber industry, again so that it can continue its relentless assault on the Canadian softwood lumber industry, one of the things that bothers me most about this deal is that it actually discourages value added manufacturing of softwood lumber in Canada.
My father used to comment on this. Whenever we saw a truck full of raw logs rolling down the highway, logs leaving the country in their round, raw log form, my dad called it economic treason to allow that raw product to leave the country without the value adding that would create quality Canadian jobs. This particular softwood lumber agreement actually discourages value added manufacturing, because the export taxes are based upon the value of the exported product. The softwood lumber deal therefore discourages value added manufacturing by imposing penalties on the value added production and thus creating an incentive for exporting raw logs.
I will quote Stephen Atkinson, the director of paper and forest products research at the Bank of Montreal. He says, for instance:
Let's say you're paying a duty--pick a number again, 15% or 5% or whatever it is. If you can bring in the log without any duty to the United States, then of course it makes sense to put the lumber mill there and create jobs south of the border.
I would like to think that Canadians have moved beyond this image of being hewers of wood and drawers of water. I would like to believe that we have the ability to manufacture and add value to the export of these natural resources, these Canadian commodities. We should not be entering into any kind of agreement that would limit or discourage value added manufacturing for softwood lumber in Canada.
I have 25 good reasons why the NDP is opposed to this deal, but time does not permit my going through them in any great detail. Suffice it to say that we have launched a courageous battle to warn Canadians and to inform Canadians that we are about to enter into a dangerous, precedent setting bad deal.