Mr. Speaker, I am glad we can recognize this special day today.
We have said from the outset of the NAFTA negotiations and the risks to tariffs that we want to work with the government. In fact, our amendments would mitigate against some of the negative impacts of this legislation. The reason we are putting it in an amendment is that when we asked for this safeguard debate over a year ago, the government did not comply. In fact, as I said, a day before tariffs were applied, the finance minister finally put tracing mechanisms in place in response to U.S. concerns about transshipment.
The government has been lurching from crisis to crisis. We are now at the final weeks of Parliament, and now it has a proposed solution to the latest crisis. What we are suggesting is some improvements to recognize critical regional infrastructure projects and jobs in western Canada. We can mitigate against the impacts with some modest amendments.
That member knows that the Liberals have collected in the range of $2 billion in tariffs from Canadian companies, such as retailers and steel producers that needed to fabricate U.S. steel to re-export it. They have had to absorb the costs of the trade disruption the government has handed them. We want a commitment that this $2 billion will go to small and medium-sized enterprises. That is what the Liberals said at the beginning.
The Prime Minister is very good at going to Algoma and putting on a jacket or a hat and making promises. Most of the time he has not come through.
We want to support the Liberals, but we want to see some mitigation aspects. We want to see them recognize the impact this would cause to western Canada, in particular on construction costs for key projects such as Site C, Muskrat Falls, the new Champlain Bridge and LNG Canada. In fact, the fabricators in those projects provide five times or more the number of jobs of the steel producers, so let us try for a win-win.
They are not used to a single win in this Parliament. Let us try for a win-win.