Mr. Speaker, I would like to start the discussion on Bill C-3 by coming back to the comments of the member for Mississauga South. He gave quite an impassioned comment and, for those of us who have actually been in the House over the last few years, a rather strange comment, in that he said he was concerned about the Americanization of Canada.
This is coming from a member who represents a party that, as I mentioned earlier, has accepted, without one single rejection, 11,000 takeovers of Canadian firms over the past 12 years. Eleven thousand firms were taken over and the Liberal government just gave them a green light, with the subsequent loss of jobs, loss of revenue and loss of profits that go elsewhere, outside of the country.
It was also strange to me when we talked about the softwood deal. Indeed, I will come back to this because this touches on the issue of international trade. The Liberal government was bringing forward an agreement on softwood lumber that was basically the same as what the Conservatives are trying to push this week. The difference is about 3¢ on the dollar, but in both cases, Liberal and Conservative, what we have is essentially allowing the Bush administration to profit, to keep the ill-gotten gains of trade crime.
Both the Liberals and the Conservatives agree with this stand. Certainly for the hon. member for Mississauga South to step forward and say he is concerned about the Americanization of this country when the Liberal government showed that, if anything, the Liberals wanted to accelerate that Americanization, it is quite strange indeed. I did not want to leave those comments without a response.
I will come back to the issue of Bill C-3, which is to a large extent taken out of Bill C-44, brought forward at the transport committee in the 38th Parliament. Although there have been calls for years to have a legislative framework around our international bridges and tunnels, under the Liberal government there was not the movement that we needed to see, so largely we welcome what we are seeing in Bill C-3.
But I should give credit where credit is due. Essentially, and I think overwhelmingly, this bill coming forward is due to the work of the member for Windsor West, who has been tireless in pushing the cause of having a federal legislative framework around international bridges and tunnels. The member for Windsor West and his colleague from Windsor--Tecumseh have been pushing forward this issue in Parliament since they were both elected a few years ago.
I think it is nice to see that their efforts have borne fruit, that their work has led to the reintroduction of this bill. It is certainly our commitment that we will be working very hard to ensure that we get this type of legislative framework around international bridges and tunnels. I should also mention the work of the member for Sault Ste. Marie, who is also impacted directly. He has been a strong defender of making sure that access passes through international bridges and tunnels, and he has been a good advocate as well. However, all of us in this House, from all four corners of the House, should thank the member for Windsor West for his tireless advocacy on behalf of the Windsor area.
What does this bill contain? The bill essentially takes components from Bill C-44 and allows, in a sense, a legislative framework to be established around international bridges and tunnels. It may be surprising to most of the people who are listening in tonight to this debate to know that there is no legislative framework existing now. Indeed, many of the international bridges and tunnels that we have across this country are privately owned and there is no legislative framework for the federal government to play its role in ensuring that bridges and tunnels are safe and secure, that they are properly maintained and that we can make the kinds of investments we need to in order to ensure that jobs are created and maintained in Canada.
I should also add that when we refer to bridges, we are talking about 24 bridges across the country. Nine are located in New Brunswick, essentially in Acadia. That area has the most international bridges in the country. Of course, there is also one in Quebec, in the Glen Sutton area.
It is a very beautiful part of Quebec. There are also seven bridges connecting Ontario and New York State. We are talking about the whole of the St. Lawrence. This sector is also very important to the Canadian economy. Four other bridges link Ontario to Michigan, including the Ambassador Bridge. I will come back to this, but let me say that this bridge is extremely important to the city of Windsor, which is represented by the members for Windsor West and Windsor—Tecumseh. In addition, there are three bridges in northwestern Ontario, connecting the province to Minnesota. The best known of these is in Fort Francis.
There are also five rail bridges: two between Ontario and New York, two between Ontario and Michigan and one in the northwest, again in Fort Francis, between Ontario and Minnesota.
Of course, we are talking about all the bridges and tunnels that have an enormous impact on the economies of the provinces, particularly Ontario, but also Quebec and New Brunswick. This is an extremely important facet of Canada's economy.
Speaking more specifically about some of the elements, when we talk about truck trade between Canada and the United States, the total value in 2004 was $346 billion. Trade by rail was valued at $98 billion. Essentially trucks and railways carry 80% of the total value of Canada's trade with the United States in the year 2004.
The Windsor-Detroit tunnel connects the U.S. interstate system with Ontario's Highway 401. It is one of the fastest and busiest links between Canada and the United States. Approximately 27,000 to 29,000 vehicles use the tunnel on a daily basis, amounting to nine million vehicles per year, 95% of that traffic being cars and 5% being trucks.
As I mentioned earlier, the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor and the Blue Water Bridge in Point Edward rank as the top two commercial crossings on the Canada-U.S. border. More than 4.7 million commercial trucks and 19.4 million passengers use these annually. With that important volume, one can understand why the member for Windsor West has been such a tireless advocate on behalf of his constituents as well as the member for Windsor—Tecumseh.
Also, the Thousand Islands crossing on an average day in 2003 served 1,600 commercial vehicles, carrying about $27.5 million worth of goods, and served 3,500 passenger vehicles. That would be carrying nearly 8,000 people between the United States and Canada at that border crossing.
The three Niagara Falls international bridge crossings support an estimated $26 billion in trade per year, and reportedly more than 500,000 U.S. and Canadian jobs depend on that export traffic travelling across the Niagara Falls bridge connectors.
Finally, in 1996 almost $1.7 billion American dollars in Canadian exports were shipped through the Sault Ste. Marie crossing, which is the largest international trade crossing in northwestern Ontario, to the United States, over one-third of which was transported by rail. In 2001, 2.5 million vehicles, including nearly 2.4 million passenger vehicles, crossed that bridge.
Therefore, we are talking about crossings that have a fundamental importance for the economy in Ontario. That is why it is extremely important that the efforts of the member for Windsor West and the member for Windsor—Tecumseh have arrived at the point now where we as a Parliament can now consider this important legislation.
We are largely in favour of the principle of the legislation. We feel it is long overdue. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that NDP members have been pushing to make this legislation a reality.
There is one area where we are concerned. When we look through Bill C-3, as other members have mentioned, we see an excessive level of centralization of power of governor in council. In other words, the government is taking over the essential ability to promote regulation when it comes to Bill C-3. That is a problem.
We have seen in other areas of international trade serious concerns with the direction of that young government. Admittedly we are perhaps talking about a government that is still trying to find its feet, but the recent softwood sellout does not allow us to increase our confidence level in the kinds of decisions that the government would make on trade issues. As I very clearly laid out, this is a matter of fundamental importance for international trade.
We have been saying that we need this legislative framework, but the member for Windsor West particularly has been saying that we need the local input to ensure, when decisions are made on safety, security, maintenance and ownership, that those decisions are made both in the local and national interests. The member for Windsor West has been a tireless advocate to ensure that the people of Windsor are involved in decisions that have a profound impact in that area.
I come from British Columbia. We are profoundly affected by softwood lumber. Yet we have seen the most catastrophic sellout of British Columbia interests on softwood lumber imaginable. It is absolutely mind-boggling that we would see the government, after hundreds of millions of dollars paid by British Columbia communities to ensure that Canada would maintain its rights under NAFTA, with a stroke of the pen give away those rights of the dispute settlement mechanism we won last August, which allowed for binding closure. The government is saying that it does not matter if Canada wins, that it will give it all away. It gave away over a billion dollars of proceeds of trade product illegally collected in softwood tariffs.
It is astounding that on an issue that impacts communities in British Columbia to such a great extent, the government would wave the white flag and surrender our rights under NAFTA, surrender over a billion dollars. In other words, it has provided the ammunition to the American industry to attack even more strongly the B.C. industry. It astounds me beyond belief that this could happen.
Our concern is if we are giving this much power into the hands of the government over international bridges and tunnels, which have as much of an economic impact, it will make the same foolish disregarded decision and sell out our interests. That is the problem.
On international trade, we have seen that the government does not understand the implications of the decisions it makes.
When it comes to international bridges and tunnels, we have shown that it has a profound impact on trade. It is of immense concern to us now that we are centralizing that control within the government. This is not how the NDP has been promoting this issue. We have been saying that local areas, Windsor, Sault Ste. Marie and other areas, need to have substantial input into those governmental decisions.
When it comes to softwood lumber, British Columbians have had no input into a softwood lumber sellout that gives away $600 million in hard-earned money paid by B.C. softwood communities to Washington in illegal tariffs, the proceeds of trade crime that the Bush administration can keep and use against the B.C. softwood industry. Even the B.C. premier, who obviously too hastily said he thought the deal might be okay, now that he has seen portions of it, though none of us have seen the complete deal, is having second thoughts. That is why he wrote to the Prime Minister and said that it was not the deal he signed off on, that there were new clauses that allowed American control of our forestry practices.
If the chaos of this bad deal on softwood is any indication, with no B.C. input for softwood communities, which are hard-pressed and which have fought to have Canada's rights maintained under NAFTA, this may be a very poor precedence that we will see for Bill C-3. That is our concern.
Though we agree with the principle of the deal and though we agree that after many years of work by NDP MPs, such as the member of Parliament for Windsor West we are finally getting to the point where we have that federal oversight, we do not see anywhere in the legislation the opportunity for the kind of local input, which is important.
I cannot stress this enough. If we go back to the softwood lumber deal, forestry companies were saying that this was a bad deal. However, the Conservative government said that it was a take or leave it situation, that it would cut them adrift, that it would not provide loan guarantees or litigation support, that it would not provide them with anything. The companies have to take the deal as it is. Because the government has to rehabilitate the trade minister, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, it will sign anything no matter how outrageous, no matter how bad a giveaway, no matter the precedent it sets, not only for softwood lumber but for any other industrial sector.
Next week, next month, next year the Bush administration can target other industrial sectors and we no longer have a dispute settlement mechanism. We no longer have a binding process that allows us to see trade justice. We now have a state of permanent trade crime that has been created because the government did not understand what it was signing. It is a nightmare
Coming back to Bill C-3, the one component that we do not like and that we will endeavour to change and improve in committee is the government's ability to make these changes and perhaps do further sellouts without having the substantive local input from regions like Windsor and Sault Ste. Marie. It is fundamentally important to ensure that our trade works on an even playing field and in the interests of those areas. I believe that is the fundamental issue.
Because of the work of the NDP MPs, the NDP believes we are finally seeing legislation, which should have been passed before, that provides the legislative framework for international bridges and tunnels. However, we are concerned about centralizing the power with a government that has shown, so far at least, that it does not know how to handle it.