Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River, who is very familiar with this issue.
I will start by talking about the Liberal Party’s agenda and the impact of that party’s support for the Conservative Party on softwood lumber. There were 110 votes on the softwood lumber agreement, and the Liberals voted in favour of that agreement 108 times. I would like to clarify something about the softwood lumber agreement: the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois all voted in favour of it. Now the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois are trying to distance themselves from this bad decision they made in the past.
Today we are discussing this motion on the forestry sector and the crisis it is suffering because of this vote three years ago on the softwood lumber agreement. At the time, the NDP very clearly stated that if this bill on the softwood lumber agreement was passed, it would be at the cost of tens of thousands of jobs in Canada and thousands of jobs in Quebec. Essentially, we said that we would be obliged to shut down our softwood lumber industry. The NDP said this very clearly, and we also heard it from witnesses from Quebec, British Columbia and other parts of Canada. In spite of everything, the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of that agreement. That was irresponsible. It was irresponsible at the time and it still is today.
In my own riding of Burnaby—New Westminster, we have lost Canfor, Western Forest Products and International Forest Products — three softwood mills that had to close down because of this agreement on softwood lumber. Today, even though we will support this motion, it is very clear that responsibility for the collapse of our softwood lumber industry continues to lie with the members of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois. They supported an agreement that killed our industry and provoked this crisis.
People will say there are other factors as well, but the collapse of our industry and the forestry crisis began when we started to implement the sellout agreement on softwood. That was when Quebec workers started to lose their jobs. That was when the workers of British Columbia started to lose their jobs. That was when the mills in northern Ontario started to close their doors. In Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, mills began shutting down. Since the fateful day of October 12, 2006, tens of thousands of jobs have been lost. The crisis was unfortunately provoked by the adoption of that agreement.
As the members of the NDP said many times three years ago and continue to say today, we did not have to adopt that agreement. That agreement was implemented on October 12, 2006. The job losses were immediate because of that vote by the Bloc, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party—the three brothers who voted together to kill our companies.
One day later, on October 13, 2006, the U.S. Court of International Trade—for, naturally, we were obliged to apply to an American court—found completely in our favour. It said that the $5 billion stolen by the Americans would have to be returned to Canada, returned to the Quebec industry, returned to the British Columbia industry, returned to the Ontario and Manitoba industries and to the Saskatchewan and Alberta industries. Those illegal duties imposed at the border would have to be removed. We won hands down. Every member in this House should have known that this decision was coming soon.
Instead of listening to the NDP members, who said very clearly that we should wait for this decision—a decision that proved we were totally right—the hon. members from the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of this sell-out, this softwood lumber agreement, which started costing jobs the moment it was passed.
That is the big problem in all the regions of Quebec, for example in the lower St. Lawrence, in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, in the Mauricie and the Outaouais. We started losing jobs the minute the vote was held. While the Bloc was voting for the motion, jobs were being lost in Quebec. As soon as the Liberal Party members who helped pass this bill—this sell-out—voted in favour of it in committee and the Liberal senators voted the same way in the Senate, jobs were lost in northern Ontario. As soon as the Conservative Party members from British Columbia voted for the bill, jobs were lost in their province. The effect was immediate, instantaneous. There could be no better proof that the NDP’s position was right—that is, to wait for the decision of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal rather than giving everything and putting everything on the table, as we did.
What has happened since? An unprecedented crisis in the forest industry: dozens of mills and plants closed all over the country, tens of thousands of jobs lost. Now we are starting to see the consequences of the decisions that were made in this sell-out, one after the other: there is the $68 million in additional penalties that the working people of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan will have to pay, and that is only the start.
The second consequence is going to cost the working people of Ontario and Quebec $200 to $300 million, and that is before the next step that we know the Americans will take regarding the fee issue in British Columbia. Some people estimate this at about $1 billion.
The members of the Bloc Québécois, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party who voted in favour of this agreement completely forgot to read the anti-circumvention provision. We told them at the time and industry representatives told them too: this provision means that every time the Americans do not like something, they can challenge it and they will win. This agreement was bad and poorly written.
I fail to understand how anyone representing Canada could have voted for such a bill. It was Mr. Emerson, the former Liberal minister who crossed the floor and became a Conservative, who introduced the bill and said all was well and we would not have these effects. Now we know that the effects are very serious and are getting worse by the day. It is not as if the agreement will get better in a few years. It is getting worse and worse.
It does not make sense for the Bloc to table this motion today without mentioning the softwood lumber agreement. We cannot simply ignore the fact that the Quebec members of the Bloc and the Liberal Party support a motion that undermines the Quebec industry, just like the Conservative members from British Columbia, who voted for a bill that undermines the industry in their province.
I know that my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River is going to talk about the amendments we are proposing so that this motion makes sense. We know for sure there is a crisis. What Canadians are realizing more and more, though, is that it was caused by the members of the Bloc Québécois, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, who joined forces to bring our softwood lumber industry to its knees.
What we need to do now, and what the NDP is doing here today, is make improvements and adopt a strategy that will really help the working people who still have a job in this industry.
That is what we are doing today.