Mr. Speaker, regardless of everything we just heard, the industry is in crisis, and it is in crisis for a number of reasons. One reason is the lack of action by the Conservative government, but there are others. There is the high dollar, the low demand due to the housing crisis in the United States, high energy costs and increased world competition. There are a lot of reasons that the industry is in crisis, but it is in crisis and it is getting worse all the time, mainly due to the lack of action by the Conservative government.
In northern Ontario we have been calling this a crisis for quite some time. The crisis is right across Canada. In small towns everywhere in Canada, people are feeling the pinch of this ongoing problem in forestry. When the going got tough the Conservatives sold out to the American lumber lobby. That is part of the reason. They left $1 billion for the United States to fight against our forestry practices, and that is not the bad part. The problem is they gave over our sovereignty of our forests.
Any decision that a province makes or plans on making to help its forestry sector become competitive and to make sure it is sustainable in the future is now questioned by the lumber activists in the United States. Whether it is safety issues over roads or anything where the governments are trying to step in and make sure the companies can become sustainable and carry out their forestry practices, the American lumber lobby is questioning it now.
Right across Canada we have quite a few problems. There are municipalities, single industry towns, that are basically being shut down. When there are problems, and we hear about these problems all the time in the large centres where there are large job losses due to plant closures, it is devastating for the large cities. In Dryden, the sole employer is a large pulp and paper operation. It is still running with about 500 employees, but it had a peak a few years ago of 1,100 employees. If that shuts down, 75% of the workforce will not be working in Dryden. We have quite a few problems, especially in small single industry towns.
I want to speak for a moment about the first nations. A fact that a lot of Canadians forget is that over 17,000 aboriginal Canadians work in the forestry industry. More than 1,400 aboriginal businesses provide employment. All of these are affected by the downturn in the forestry economy and the lack of action by the Conservative government.
Motion No. 414 talks about an economic diversification package aimed specifically at communities that rely on forestry, and in my riding of Kenora we have a lot of that. I will speak for a moment on the integration of the forestry plants in northern Ontario, and it is the same for many areas of Canada, because a lot of people do not understand exactly how it works.
Whether it is a lumber plant, a pulp and paper plant, an OSB, plywood, or laminated beams plant, all these plants produce specific items but they all feed into the general stream that makes the other plants viable. Integration of all forestry plants in northern Ontario is important. It is vital to make sure they are viable, and I will give several examples.
In Ignace a state of the art sawmill has been closed down. It got value out of the trees at the best possible values, but all the residue chips were sent to Dryden. Ear Falls is still running but at a reduced rate. It is the same thing. It is allowed to sell lumber. It can make money because it sells the chips. The hog fuel also goes to providing energy. These plants have to continue to operate.
Kenora had a newsprint mill and when it shut down, all the residue chips that it did not use which normally would have gone to Dryden had to be flown somewhere else at a higher cost. The Dryden operation is the only large pulp and paper operation left in my riding, and without these sawmills running, due to the whole number of reasons I listed in my first comments, it cannot operate. It cannot operate at an economic level. It is closing down capacity and it is basically producing less paper without that support.
Motion No. 414 also talks about tax measures. Again I will go back to the issue of Kenora but it has happened right across Canada, in northern Ontario, northern Quebec and everywhere. There are large plants that are now closed and sitting empty. These are large sites.
Regarding the Kenora example, there is over $100 million worth of infrastructure sitting there. One of the most important is a very large treatment lagoon which could be used for another industry if we had tax measures that would allow industries to come in. The problem again is that no one is going to come in and invest in forestry the way the cycle is right now, but other measures could come in to allow some other industry to come in.
We are in the centre of Canada. Few people realize that the Kenora riding is almost in the dead centre of Canada. There is a lot that we could do if we were given the tax measures to interest somebody to come in. We do have large markets close by in Minneapolis and Chicago. There has to be some way to allow these plants to reopen, to provide some kind of future for the people of Kenora.
With government loan guarantees for modernization, there are many upgrades that sawmills could carry out. The bottom line of all modernization has to be that we get more value out of the tree. For too often we brought in large trees and sawed them into 2x4s. There is equipment out there now that could be bought which could help the sawmills become more productive, more feasible and again make sure they are operating at peak capacity and make sure that they provide employment for the local people and a product that the world needs.
Government loan guarantees could be used for new paper machines. Recently in Dryden a machine that produced about 355,000 tonnes was closed down to run one for about 155,000. These machines are 25 years old. If loan guarantees were available, the company could look at putting in a brand new paper machine that could produce whatever was demanded, whether it was 155,000 tonnes or up to the larger amounts of 500,000.
These things should be put into place. Companies should have the option to get these guarantees to make sure that they can move forward, use the fibre that is so abundant in northern Ontario and make sure that they provide employment and again a product that the world needs.
With respect to greenhouse gas reduction targets, most of the public does not realize that the pulp and paper industry is ahead of the curve. This industry has done very well in making sure that its emissions are under control and ahead of what is proposed for Canada. It has a lot to offer. Again, we go right down to the other uses. Sawmills are not large emitters but they have opportunities to benefit from carbon plans that could come in making sure that they get value for the investments that they have made in the past.
The government could do more to make sure that programs are in place to protect our environment. We have spoken in the past about protecting the environment. Operations could be closing the loops in their systems. Most operations bring water in at one end, use it for the needed processes and then clean it up and discharge it at the other end.
With today's environment conscious nature, we could be closing these loops. There is no reason that the water in the plant could not be recycled and used over and over again so there would be no effluent travelling into our rivers. The best way to protect the environment is to make sure that everything stays inside the system and close the loop.There have to be opportunities available for us in that.
With respect to refundable tax credits and research and development, this is really the future of the forestry industry, an industry that has played a very large role in the development of Canada. This has been our past. This is how we opened up the country. There are tough times. When there are tough times no one is going to invest. It is up to the government to step forward, make sure that it provides some kind of incentive and make sure we are looking to the future and make sure research and development is well funded so that our companies can be ready to face the future and whatever opportunities that are there.
There are other support programs, energy and ethanol for forest waste cogeneration. Again, in my riding and many ridings across Canada the waste on the forest floor is left to pile up and then it is burned. When we fly across northern Ontario in the fall we can see thousands of large fires, after the forest fire season has ended. They burn this waste. There is a lot of opportunity to use this in cogeneration. Again, with respect to Kenora, we put forward plans to make sure that a lot of that forest waste was brought forward, used in co-generation to reduce the energy costs in the mill.
We have to get everything we can from the fibre stream. We have to use the trees for their best value. We are just starting the process and making sure we are extracting the most value from our forests. This is our future.
On employment insurance, there are all these towns that have been devastated, Ignace, Ear Falls, Kenora, Sioux Lookout and Dryden. They all have workforces that have been displaced. The government plan is to retrain them and move them out. I want no part of that. I do not want to have to retrain every employee in northern Ontario and then ship them out somewhere else. What will be left when we do find the answers to make sure industry can survive in northern Ontario?
Support for older workers is something that the government can be involved in. If there are buy-outs to be had or if there are retirement incentive packages, the government can be part of that to make sure that our workers are respected for their long service, and that at 54 or 55 years old they are not shipped somewhere else.
We did have a lot of these answers in the $1.5 billion forestry package. This was thrown out by the Conservatives when they came into power and it is going to cost the communities in Canada a lot.
Canada grew out of its small towns. We need to keep small town Canada. The only way we are going to keep small town Canada is by investing in it. When it is tough times, that is not the time for the government not to back them up. It is not going to help small town Canada. We have to make sure that we respect our small towns. We want to make sure that they are involved in our future.
There is a future in forestry. It is not enough to wash our hands and simply say we are retraining all the workers. We should put packages together to make sure that we respect those workers and make sure that forestry is part of our future.