Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup for introducing this motion, since it gives me the opportunity to speak about this issue.
It has been interesting to listen to the speakers on this motion from the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. The motion basically says that we have to do something to save this industry, that the government has to step in and make sure it survives. I have absolutely no hope that either the current government or the Liberal Party if it were ever to get back into government are going to do anything to save this industry.
This industry had in excess of 100,000 jobs a little over two years ago and now it has less than 50,000. There has been a full 50% drop in a year and a half since the new rules came into play.
The old Liberal government had the opportunity to do something. We heard the last speaker say that the Liberals did all these things. They did all those things and we got absolutely nothing for it. This sector lost 50,000 jobs. That is how beneficial those programs were. The Liberals had the opportunity to do something.
There was a plan under the WTO that would have allowed them to prohibit the massive incursion of product into this country over the first three years as the rules under the WTO changed. Did the Liberals invoke that? No. They could have restricted that input for a full three years. Did our allies, our competitors in the United States and in other countries, invoke it? Yes, they did. Did they save the jobs in those countries? Yes, they did.
The Conservative government is no different. The Conservatives have the opportunity still to invoke that. We still have 18 months in which this plan could be used. Are they going to do it? Absolutely not.
They are so ideologically hooked into free trade, letting the market decide everything, globalization and all those terms that we hear. That of course ignores what happens when we go down that route, when the government does not play the role it should be playing to protect those jobs. Those jobs disappear.
I want to acknowledge the work of the member from the Bloc in bringing forward this motion. This is the second time he has brought it forward. He brought it forward in the last Parliament and he has brought it forward again this time and rightfully so. We should be doing something, because if we do not, the number of jobs will go from 50,000 to zero. The reason that will happen is the manufacturers themselves have seen the lay of the land. They are moving product in raw form offshore into third world countries primarily. They are exploiting the labour there under reprehensible work conditions. They are also exploiting the natural environment by not meeting any environmental standards whatsoever. Because of the way the trading rules work, that value added product can be brought back into Canada tariff free.
Those 50,000 jobs still exist but they are in China, India and other parts of the undeveloped third world. They are gone from Canada and the other 50,000 will disappear unless we take some positive action.
I find that particularly galling because what I see happening in the textile industry is being mimicked in the auto industry, the sector which is the backbone of the economy in my region. Exactly the same thing is going on. This obsessive adherence to ideological beliefs as opposed to what is practically happening in the marketplace both domestically and internationally is continuing. Again, it is with both political parties, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. It does not matter which party is sitting on the government side and which one is sitting on the opposition side, they would be following exactly the same policies and those policies would be leading to the devastation of industries. We are seeing it in the steel industry as well as in the auto industry. Pertinent to the debate today, we can see it in the textile industry and in a number of other ones.
Any industry where there is value added is not being protected. The end result in the manufacturing sector is that overall over the last four or five years we have seen the loss of 200,000 to 300,000 manufacturing jobs. These are well paying jobs. They are jobs and incomes that support the communities where those jobs lie, and those communities in addition to the individual workers are being devastated.
My area alone has lost almost 10,000 manufacturing jobs. Unless there is a quick turnaround in the attitude of government in terms of saying we are going to have an auto policy, we are going to have a policy that is going to protect the textile industry, those jobs are not coming back.
This is not just an economic downturn. This is the disappearance of whole sectors of our economy that we are sending offshore.
The NDP is very happy to support this motion 100%, but I have to say that there is no hope in my party that either the current government, or the Liberal Party, if it ever got back into government, would do anything to implement this motion.