Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to enter into the debate on Motion No. 158 put forward by my colleague from the Bloc. It gives us the opportunity to draw attention to an industry that suffers terribly from neglect from not just the current federal government but a series of federal governments.
Time does not permit us to go through the complex difficulties that this industry has. Let me start by saying though that I represent 43 garment manufacturers in the inner city of Winnipeg. That number is down dramatically from its peak perhaps 10 or 20 years ago when it was a major industry in my home province. Still today well-meaning companies are doing their best to hang on but it is literally by their fingernails, companies like Western Glove, Tanjay, Peerless and Gemini. Their workforces are dramatically reduced but they continue to try their best to maintain their second and third generation companies.
Let me for a minute express how important these jobs are to new Canadians. In many ways the garment sector in Winnipeg has offered gateway jobs for newcomers who come to Canada. It is often the first job that they find. These are good jobs. They are unionized jobs that pay a reasonable wage with fair working conditions. These are not sweatshops. These are quality jobs. Often there is a day care centre in the building. They are quality jobs that we are seeing fly out the window with very little action taken to try to arrest this flight of jobs.
The single issue I will dwell on today in the few minutes that I have is to appeal to the Government of Canada to reconsider exercising the safeguards that are available to stem the onslaught, the absolute floodgates of Chinese imports that have taken place since the January 1, 2005 WTO system of quotas was lifted for Chinese imports. This has been devastating to the riding that I represent. It is a material tangible issue we can see in the inner city of Winnipeg. I do not rise in any way to object to international trade or free trade, et cetera. This is all about fairness.
The reason China enjoys this unfair competitive advantage is what we believe are the illegal and unfair subsidies given to the Chinese producers in the form of currency manipulation, non-performing loans, reduced or free utilities provided to those factories, subsidized shipping, sometimes no property taxes, export tax rebates, et cetera.