Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate about the problem of plant closures in Canada, whether in the forestry industry or the textile industry.
The Conservative Party likes to boast about how the unemployment rate is the lowest in the last 30 years. There is a problem, though. The unemployment rate may be at its lowest, but it does not tell us how many people are having to work three jobs to earn enough money to support their families. They have to work in one restaurant during the day, in another restaurant in the evening and in yet another on the weekend. The Conservative Party never talks about the fact that families have lost good jobs and found themselves with minimum-wage jobs instead.
It would be interesting to do a study. The government has the resources to do it; it had a $14 billion surplus last year. It should do a study to find out where the jobs went. I am sure that they did not all go to Alberta, to Fort McMurray, or “Fort MakeMoney”, as it is called. No, they have been transformed into jobs that pay low wages, so people have to have two or three jobs. We can indeed say that the unemployment rate has fallen; however, we must also look at the incomes that families are earning.
In recent years—and this started while the Liberal Party was in government—we have had the softwood lumber problem. For years, until this problem was settled with the United States, it handicapped and hurt forestry companies. When the Conservatives came to power, they decided that $4 billion would do the job, even though the Americans owed us $5 billion. So we lost $1 billion to the Americans. That is just fine, because we have piles of money in Canada and we are drowning in surpluses. Rather than invest that money in infrastructure in our towns and villages, the Conservative government hands it over to the Americans, to the tune of $1 billion, no problem. And then they think they have solved the problem. But they have not solved it, because the companies were affected after that.
For example, in my riding, in October 2005 when the Smurfit-Stone company closed down in Bathurst, as it did in New Richmond, jobs were lost and that really hurt the communities. These were jobs in a paper mill that had been in Bathurst for at least 100 years. It was formerly operated by Consolidated-Bathurst. It had been there for many years.
One of the problems that arose was because Canada and governments had not been vigilant in the past when it came to the freedom to sell our companies to foreign businesses. For example, one company was sold to an American business, Stone, which was then bought by Smurfit, which ultimately became Smurfit-Stone. All of a sudden, one fine day in New York, in their administrative offices, the directors of that company said to themselves that they had enough production, and looked at the map and decided to close the paper mills in Bathurst and New Richmond, period. It is over, we are cleaning house.
They send the timber harvested in the forests to another company that is foreign-owned. Take, for example, UPM which bought the Miramichi company. The timber harvest goes to Miramichi. That was when the UPM plant decided to closes its door for 9 to 12 months. Six hundred employees were laid off for 9 to 12 months. Now, we learn that the timber has been loaded on boats at Belledune and sent to Finland because Russia is refusing to provide wood to Finland. And we are the ones who are paying the price. We can see why Canadian companies have closed: foreign companies look after their own country first.
I personally wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada and to the Minister of Natural Resources asking them what our Liberal colleague from Cape Breton—Canso had asked earlier: should there not be a summit meeting to discuss the situation? I also wrote to the premier of New Brunswick, Shawn Graham, a Liberal, to ask the same thing: Why do you not bring all the players together around the same table; industry, unions, governments and people in the region? I suggested to them that they should bring these people together around a table so they could discuss this major problem.
I was not very proud of the reply from the premier of New Brunswick. He replied that we are lucky to have those companies because otherwise it would be worse. Close the plant, take the wood and ship it to Finland. Could it be worse than that? It is shameful and scandalous that we have lost our jobs.
Moreover, we are losing our resources that are being sent to foreign countries. It is not enough that they come in and close our companies; in addition, they say that if we want to buy their companies, we must not compete with them. How can a paper company not compete with another paper company? They come and tell us that it is closed and to forget them. That is what they told us.
Finland is not the only place that wood from New Brunswick is being sent. It is also going to Chicago. During my tour, I went to Hearst and Kapuskasing, in Ontario, where the same problem exists. They are closing the sawmills; the wood goes to the United States and they lose their wood. I am certain that the same thing happens in Quebec and that the wood is going elsewhere.
The government is not proactive. It is doing absolutely nothing to stop this. The only thing they tell us is that it could be worse.
Last week, this is what we learned about a textile company in New Brunswick. The company is Fils Fins Atlantique of Pokemouche in the riding of Acadie—Bathurst and Atholville in the Restigouche area. It employs about 300 people. This company does business with South America, which imposes a 15% tax. With the dollar now so high, and with the 15% tax, it cannot make ends meet. The industry and the unions are asking for an agreement to remove that 15% and to have a bilateral agreement—that was already negotiated some time ago but has never been signed—to help the company to find new jobs. How many textile companies have also closed in Quebec? They are closing everywhere.
The Conservative government has the nerve to boast to us that Canada's economy is strong. I can state that the economy is not doing that well in rural areas and in regions, like ours, where there is practically no more fishery. That is also the case in the Acadian peninsula and in southeastern New Brunswick and in Nova Scotia. The forestry sector is closing down because of foreign companies that buy our companies, then close their doors and distribute or ship our wood to their own countries.
The federal government is doing absolutely nothing. The Liberal government with its 13 years in power has nothing to brag about either. This story about not being in power because the NDP made the government fall is old hat now. They are not in power because Canadians threw them out. They were involved in scandals, they stole money from the public and that is why they got rid of them. It was the public who did that, not the NDP. The people were given the opportunity to vote and they booted them out. They had 13 years to settle our problems in our regions.
The Conservatives have nothing to brag about. On their watch, there have been closures of sawmills, paper mills, textile mills all over in the rural regions, once after the other. Furthermore, it is not true that all our people want to go to Alberta, even if a number of them do so to get work. People move to the west, to Saskatchewan, to the Northwest Territories, although they want to be back home. They have families and they would like to be able to work at home. What is more, they deserve to be able to do so.
I am asking the government to get all the players into the game, to set up a strategy and not to put it off until next year. How can we stem the flow of closures and sales of our Canadian companies? Perhaps by handing them over to our local people? Perhaps a movement should be started up to form cooperatives and to hand them over to people in the regions with the ability to handle their own production. We ought to be able to create jobs in our regions rather than watching businesses close one after the other. Governments try to boast about their good track record, but there are places out there where things are not working out. In some parts of Canada, the rural areas have been forgotten.
It is to be hoped that measures will be put in place to help those who have lost jobs, whether at Fils Fins, in the forest industry or in some other sector.