Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Motion M-414, presented by the hon. member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, to address the crisis in the manufacturing and forestry sectors. I have a hard time understanding how the government member could have said earlier that Canadian industry was doing well. He definitely did not visit the right regions, or else he is turning a blind eye to what is really going on.
We need only take a look at the situation in northeastern New Brunswick, for example. The UPM plant in Miramichi closed its doors resulting in the loss of 600 jobs. The Weyerhaeuser mill, also in Miramichi, closed putting 140 people out of work. And again in Miramichi, 400 people working at the kraft paper mill lost their jobs. In 2005-06, 100 workers at the Nelson plant in Miramichi lost their jobs. In 2005, 270 workers at the Smurfit-Stone plant in Bathurst were laid off. Furthermore, AbitibiBowater, a company established in the 1930's, has just closed its doors putting about 360 people out of work. As for New Richmond,I am not sure how many jobs were lost, but I believe it was at least 300 to 350.
We could also look at the situation in northern Ontario. I have brothers who left Quebec 45 years ago to work in northern Ontario. They worked all their lives for Domtar and Abitibi Paper and they would never have believed that these plants would close their doors as they did last year.
A whole industry is shutting down and the government says that it is doing just fine. Yes, it is doing fine: service jobs that pay minimum wage are being created. It is not that these types of jobs are not needed. However, these regions are hurting from the loss of jobs such as those at the Smurfit-Stone, AbitibiBowater and UPM plants. We have to ask why this happened. How did we lose these jobs? We are told that the American dollar has something to do with it. If the American dollar is a factor in these plant closures, then why are the companies saying that they are closing them forever and that they will only sell to companies that are not their competitors?
The truth is that with NAFTA and free trade, foreign companies have stepped in and been allowed to buy our Canadian companies. These foreign companies end up deciding that their production is big enough and that they no longer need the plants in Canada. Once these companies have secured the market they close the plants. That is what is happening.
Smurfit-Stone bought the companies in Bathurst and New Richmond, but after a number of years it told the workers they were no longer needed. It said goodbye and left. After acquiring the markets, it closed the plants to eliminate the competition.
The government invested money at the time, but there should have been agreements to ensure that these foreign countries could not close the plants in the heartless way they did. From one day to the next, they decided to close the doors, say goodbye and leave.
The Finnish company, UPM, kept sending wood to Finland, when people at home had lost their jobs. That is what happened. The same thing has happened to the paper plants throughout northern Ontario. Companies come here thinking that they can do what they want under free trade. They take our forest supply, have secondary and tertiary processing done abroad, send the wood to the United States and have absolutely no regard for jobs in Canada.
The government has turned a deaf ear to all this.
Now it is bragging about investing $1 billion for the forestry industry, in order to try to fix this disaster. Even that money did not come easily, because the government wanted it to be included in the budget. That was blackmail. The government wanted the money to be dependent on the passage of the budget. If it had not passed, there would have been no money.
Last fall, when the government wanted to give a tax cut to large corporations, it did not say it would wait to see whether or not the budget was passed. The majority government, with the Liberals, made a mini-budget. They did this with the help of the Liberals. We do not have a minority government now; we have a majority Conservative and Liberal government. No one ever thought they would live to see such a coalition in Canada. The Liberals always said that they were the official opposition and that they would never vote with the government. Now, that is what they do. They remain seated, they do not vote; they leave, they do not vote. I think they should get a pay cut when they do not bother to vote. The unions call this a walkout. If an employee leaves their job, they are not paid. The Liberals are leaving the House, they are not voting, they are not working, but they still get paid for their work day.
The forestry crisis did not start yesterday. Rather, it started under the Liberals, who stalled, stalled and stalled some more. This continued with the Conservatives, who now boast about receiving $5 billion, which is what the member said earlier. In fact, the American government owed us $5 billion dollars, and a $4 billion agreement was signed. The industry was robbed of $1 billion. Even worse than the theft of $1 billion, softwood lumber plants could not operate for five or more years. This left our companies in a very weak position. Today people have lost their jobs. This is nothing to boast about.
Industries, such as the forestry industry, began in 1930. Industries that are almost 100 years old are closing their doors. This hurts communities, towns and cities. This hurts an entire community. These industries were the heart of the economy in northwestern New Brunswick, for part of the Gaspésie and northern Ontario. There is also a large concentration of forestry work in British Columbia.
What are they going to do with a billion dollars? That sure sounds like a lot of money. The government has invested a billion dollars. It was forced to do so during the budget vote. I think that the government was ashamed of how it went about doing things. It wanted to tie that to passage of the budget, yet it gave $14 billion to big companies last year. So what has that billion dollars done so far? Absolutely nothing.
Our people have no choice but to leave their homes to go work out west. I hear the Conservatives telling people in the Atlantic provinces to go work out west, to go work out there because there are so many jobs that they have to bring in people from other countries. Working out west hurts our families and our people. These people are forced to go out west, but government regulations offer nothing in the way of support, such as employment insurance. If a person goes out west for three months and then has to come back home, that person cannot take advantage of a temporary layoff to go see family. These workers live in camps. Then when they come home, hoping to collect employment insurance for a brief period of time, they are not entitled.
Last week, when we were back in our ridings, I met a man who went to work out west. I plan to take this matter up with the authorities. He worked either 660 or 630 hours out there. He returned to New Brunswick, and when he called the employer to ask for his total number of hours, the employer said that he had worked 10 and a half hours. The employee brought me all of his employer-issued pay stubs, which showed that he had worked 630 hours. He contacted Revenue Canada, and was told that he needed his T-4 to complete his tax return. He then called the company, and was told that he had worked only 10 and a half hours. He told them that no, he had worked 630 hours, and that he had all the pay stubs to prove that he had worked for them.
The company representatives responded by saying that they had heard enough from him, and just like that, they hung up on him, telling him to sort out his problems himself. And there was another worker who left for the same reasons.
In addition, regarding the forestry crisis, it is important to solve the problems at home, in our ridings. We must help our fellow citizens survive. They need more than $1 billion. We must help improve their quality of life—