Mr. Speaker, we know where the government's attention is. We heard it today in question period, when it could not even get a simple question correct. With all the people working in government, with all the statistical information that the government could have, in response to a simple question by one of our colleagues from the Bloc Québécois on EI, it had the audacity to deliberately mislead the House of Commons and Canada by telling us that 82% of EI claimants get EI. Where did that figure come from? The truth is that fewer than 40% of the people who claim for EI actually receive it. Where did that figure of 82% come from? It is unbelievable.
Here is another place where the government's attention is. Page 8 of Quorum shows that in 2007 the ten highest-paid bureaucrats in the government got bonuses of 25%, 33%, 28%, 24%, 15%.
What does the government tell the shipyard workers? “We are going to phase out your industry. You might be able to collect EI if you qualify”.
Well, shipyard workers do not want EI. They want to have jobs and look after themselves.
I get a kick out of the Liberals and the Bloc when they say that they want to have a national policy. We already have one. In 2001, the then industry minister, Brian Tobin, struck a committee made up of labour and industry. It came together with the “Breaking Through” document. It presented five major recommendations to assist the industry and put it on sound financial footing. Some of the elements were a combination of what we call structured facility financing and accelerated cost capital allowance, but in order for them to work, they had to be together.
Yes, the government did put in SFF, but not for the five-year term that we and industry and labour had asked for, and not with ACCA. We needed to have them together. It was a straightforward recommendation that would have put this industry on sound footing. It did not happen.
That report is still collecting dust on the Minister of Industry's desk. How frustrating it is that almost eight years after these workers, companies and groups got together to do that report, trusting that something might move, it has not happened.
We have heard from Liberals. The hon. member for Halifax West, when he was the fisheries minister, stood in the shipyards and said, “Don't worry, folks. We're going to build those big new mid-shore Coast Guard vessels right here”.
Four years later and with a Conservative government, we still do not have them, yet what do the Conservatives announce in a budget? Instead of the $22 billion worth of work that we need over 20 years for building the JSS support vessels, the Coast Guard vessels, the icebreakers, the laker fleets, the ferry fleets, et cetera, we got what we call the “canoe budget” of $175 million to build some hovercraft and do some mid-life refits on some vessels.
That $175 million is important. There is no doubt about it. However, the major yards, except for the refits, are not going to be building hovercraft. It just does not happen.
In reality, very much more was required and very little was delivered.
The Conservatives are nice people individually. There is not one of them I would not want as my neighbour. We have to ask ourselves, though, what they, with their Liberal friends and their Bloc friends, would collectively tell the shipbuilding industry, when in committee after committee they heard and heard again that these trade deals may very well be the end of us in the future.
It is not just EFTA alone that will kill this industry. Once we put in this trade deal with EFTA, then Korea is knocking on our door, and Korea has said very clearly that shipbuilding and the auto sector will be major factors in our trade talks.
That is where the deal will be killed. That is when shipbuilding says goodbye in this country.
The government may want to remain true to its word down the road and say that we are going to build the Diefenbaker here in Canada. The irony of it is that in order for a yard to do it, the government may have to subsidize that yard to get it done, as it did for the Irvings in the 1980s. It gave them millions of dollars to upgrade the yard. They built the frigates. Then it gave them $55 million to shut it down. That was the Conservatives and the Liberals.
The reality is that we have an industry that can be viable, that can hire thousands of people.
I will relate an incident that happened yesterday. The EnCana Corporation, with the Deep Panuke project, announced that Irving in Halifax will be building an offshore vessel. It is a $60 million contract. All of a sudden, 200 additional workers will come back in, $20 million will be offset to the economy in payroll and income taxes, and there will be $14 million of direct input into the Halifax-Dartmouth area.
That is one supply vessel, at $60 million. Can members imagine what billions of dollars of work would do, not just in Halifax, but in Marystown, Lévis, Welland, and the Washington yards in Victoria, what it would do for a stimulus package in this country? We do not have to subsidize it; we have to invest.
The men and women in the military deserve new navy fleets. The men and women in the Coast Guard deserve those new vessels. The men and women who ply the Great Lakes deserve new laker fleets, and the men and women who serve our ferries and transportation on the east and west coasts and in the Great Lakes areas deserve to have those new ferries.
We certainly do not want to see another example of the BC Ferries corporation having three vessels built in Germany at a cost of $540 million and not one job created in B.C. because of it. Then what does the BC Ferries corporation ask? They want a waiver of the 25% import duty charges. They want to waive it, because if they do not get it, what will happen is that they may have to raise rates on the ferries. It is blackmail. That is exactly what they are doing to the government. I hope the government says very politely to the BC Ferries corporation, “No, you must pay those duties coming in.”
George MacPherson, a B.C. shipyard worker, said very clearly, if the government had invested that money properly, it could have built those ships for probably less than what it did in Germany, because 40¢ on every dollar would have gone immediately back into the economy through income payroll taxes. That does not include the offset jobs that would have been there.
Of course, the Conservatives are very serious about economic plans and they like to create jobs. We saw a classic example of that just a while ago when 18 of their friends entered the Senate for $6 million. What a great economic stimulus package that was.
I could be wrong on this one but I would not mind testing it: I do not think there is one member of Parliament in the House who was asked by any constituent to request that the Prime Minister put 18 more of his friends in the Senate to get the economy going. That is where it is, the Senate.
That is not what Canadians are asking for. They are asking for jobs and for the ability to look after their own families, to pay their taxes and live in their communities.
We have five major yards left in this country. Since 2001, since the “Breaking Through” report, we have consistently, over and over again, asked the previous government and the current government to pay half as much attention to the shipbuilding industry as it does the aerospace industry.
It was not lost on anyone when the Conservatives stood and bragged about an investment of over $300 million in the aerospace industry. What happened because of it? Some very good news: Bombardier-Canadair with a more than $1 billion contract. That, in my opinion, is a sound investment.
I know this sounds like a socialist-democratic idea that the ghosts of Tommy Douglas, Stanley Knowles and J.S. Woodsworth are coming back to filter through the House of Commons, but imagine the concept of using Canadian taxpayers' dollars to hire Canadian workers to work in Canadian shipyards, work with Canadian companies, and build Canadian ships.
That is such a far-fetched idea. It must be some crazy NDPer saying this. The reality is that this is what Canadians are asking for. They want investments in strategic industries that will build the economy of tomorrow. They want to make sure that their tax dollars go to hire their friends and their neighbours so that they in turn have jobs to look after their families.
For the government to sell out the shipyard workers and the companies through this EFTA deal means that Korea is next, and what else after that? Yet we have reported over and over again that there is nothing wrong, nothing illegal, no trade disputes at all, in carving shipbuilding out of that debate.
We can have the EFTA deal. We do not mind it at all. In fact, we would like the government to promote the EFTA deal, but leave shipbuilding out of it, because that will eventually hurt our industry.
In 2003, when I questioned the then deputy prime minister, John Manley, in this House, we heard him say that the shipbuilding industry, in his view, was a sunset industry, that it was time to get over it and move on. That is what he said in 2003.
I honestly believe there are a lot of Liberals, a lot of Conservatives and the bureaucrats behind it who still believe that and would trade off this industry for something else. That is inexplicable. It is unbelievable that two major parties in the House who have been governing this country since Confederation can have such a dim view of shipbuilding in this country.
The reality is that with sound investment and the proper protection this industry can grow and be a bright light in the future for our economy.