Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-411, An Act to amend the Special Import Measures Act (domestic prices). The summary of the bill states:
This enactment sets out the conditions required for deeming whether domestic prices in a country are substantially determined by the government of that country and there is sufficient reason to believe that they are not substantially the same as they would be if they were determined in a competitive market.
I understand the concerns and issues, and I understand the spirit of the bill. It essentially targets two specific areas. One is dumping practices, which I will talk about, and the other is the pressure on our domestic market. I would say that the manufacturing, forestry, and textile sectors would be the relevant sectors that feel competition from imports, especially when it comes to our dumping practices.
Dumping is an anti-competitive practice that undermines domestic production. Dumping is the sale of a product for export at less than its normal value.
Artificial price reduction is illegal under the World Trade Organization rules because it harms producers in the export market. This strategy also harms exporters of similar products in third countries because they are unable to compete with artificially cheap exports from the dumping country.
If Canada can show that a foreign exporter is dumping products on its market and that these imports could harm Canadian producers, it is entitled to impose anti-dumping measures, such as charging an import duty to raise the price of a certain product to better reflect its actual value in accordance with WTO law.
As I indicated, that is definitely a legitimate concern and something that we need to address. I will allude to some of the concerns I have about this bill specifically around dumping practices. There are other concerns, as I mentioned earlier on, in the manufacturing sector and the forestry sector.
The manufacturing sector alone represents 18% of economic activity in Canada and its contribution to wealth creation is even greater. Since December 2002 until November, statistics indicate that over 210,000 jobs have been lost in manufacturing alone. This is enormous pressure on our manufacturing sector and it needs to be addressed.
What bothers me profoundly is that the current government is aggressively pursuing trade negotiations with the South Koreans and is putting in place a trade deal that would effectively further compound job losses in the manufacturing sector. I cannot understand why the government would pursue such an initiative. It wants to, in effect, create jobs in lower value-added areas that pay less and have less benefits. We would lose our high value-added Canadian jobs. This really concerns me.
There are other issues with respect to South Korea regarding non-tariff barriers that need to be addressed in that trade agreement that have not been addressed thus far by the minister. We have not had proper debate or discussion on that. We are working thoroughly in committee to address these concerns and hopefully that will shed some light on these important issues.
Most important, this is about families. When a person loses a job, it compromises his or her family's position. It is a loss of income. It also has a direct impact on the community. This has to be addressed as well. Not only have we lost those jobs but we are fundamentally shifting the landscape of our country with respect to the economic outlook going forward.
The other sector that is obviously under a tremendous amount of pressure is the forestry sector. Not too long ago the government signed a flawed deal, one that is referred to as the softwood sell-out, a title which I think is appropriate. This deal has questioned our sovereignty when it comes to forestry policies. By signing this deal we left $1 billion on the table, a substantial amount of money. It was a broken promise by the government. The government committed to collect the full amount of the tariffs, but it only collected 80¢ to the dollar, leaving $1 billion on the table. The government threw all our WTO and NAFTA rulings right out the door to settle for a deal that puts on quotas, and charges higher tariff rates to our industry.
Every day in the business section of the newspapers we read about forestry companies closing, mills closing and people losing jobs. This is not simply a matter of jobs. It affects families and communities. It has a ripple effect across our country and our economy. Not only is there concern about particular job loss, but many of these jobs, specifically if we consider the auto sector, have seven to eight spinoff jobs that are lost as well because they are directly correlated with that initial job.
There are thousands of jobs being lost in manufacturing and forestry. I can understand the intent of this private member's bill is to make sure that our economy avoids dumping practices and also avoids the unfair pressure on our manufacturing sector, the forestry sector and the textile sector and other important key industries in our economy.
I indicated before that I do have some reservations and concerns about this particular bill. The bill seeks to codify the conditions used to determine if an export monopoly exists in a given country. It does this by outlining five conditions which, if any of them were not met, would automatically result in a country being deemed to have an export monopoly.
This bill is redundant and seeks to tell the president of the Canada Border Services Agency how to do his job. The president of the CBSA is the one who currently makes this determination.
In my opinion, the categories are broad and could conceivably result in almost any country being designated as having an export monopoly. This includes the United States and the European Union which the CBSA already relies on to determine “normal market practices”. This again impairs the ability of the CBSA and the Canadian International Trade Tribunal to do their jobs.
These are legitimate concerns that our party has. The concerns that this bill wants to address can be dealt with through a variety of mechanisms, including the existing trade agreements, as well as trade tribunals. These issues are better addressed during trade negotiations.
The Liberal Party has always advocated for trade agreements which seek a fair balance, free and fair trade. We have done so and have demonstrated this in our discussions on the South Korea free trade negotiations.
The Liberal Party is a party of free trade. We have a long history of promoting free and fair trade. If we look at our trade negotiations with South Korea, our concern generally has revolved around market access. We want to make sure that Canadian products have a level playing field when being sold in South Korea. We do not want South Korean products to come into our market and our companies and our hard-working Canadians have difficulty selling our products into the South Korean market. This is a legitimate concern that we have. This is the concern that is being addressed.
As I said in my remarks, that there were some concerns that we had around Bill C-411. I have addressed our concerns about the bill. I will again remind the members who are listening that we have reservations and concerns.
We have said that the bill seeks to codify the conditions used to determine if any export monopoly exists in a given country. It does this by outlining five conditions that if were not met would automatically result in a country being deemed to have an export monopoly.
Our party has expressed its concerns about this bill. We understand the spirit and the intent of the bill. We understand the pressures that are currently being felt in our economy from dumping practices. We have alluded to and explained the process around the dumping practices. There is a system in place to address this.
We feel that this bill is too simple. It does not have the wording and the mechanism in place to properly address the concerns that have been raised by some members.
As I have said before, the Liberal Party understands the concerns. We feel that those concerns can be addressed in trade agreements and through trade tribunals. That is something that the Liberal Party has supported as a party of free and fair trade. We look forward to further discussions on this bill.