Mr. Speaker, we are participating in a take-note debate tonight, which is designed to allow members to give their opinion on policy development on a matter of urgency. Today, the government has taken a delegation to Washington, D.C. ostensibly to talk about the softwood lumber dispute. I want to briefly, in the time I have, outline what the problem is and two ways to fix it.
We have to start by laying out the fact. The fact is that the American government has become more protectionist, particularly in its policies with Canada, under the tenure of the current government. My colleague from Timmins—James Bay outlined some of the issues, but it is everything from some of the policies around dairy; the EV tax credits that my colleague from Markham—Thornhill raised in the House during question period today; and the failure of the Americans to really respond to pleas on the Line 5 issue, and I know that the government was silent on KXL but certainly provincial governments were active on that. I could name many issues, but the doubling of the softwood tariffs suggests that something is very wrong with Canada's relationship with the United States. The question is, why? That is a question everybody in this place should ask, in a very sober tone.
The world has changed and it benefits all of us to have a strong relationship with the Americans, some continental economic unity and some continental integrated defence and immigration policies. It makes sense because the world has changed. When we look at supply chains and at trade, we need to be working with partners that are like-minded. Therefore, the question is this: Why has this relationship deteriorated?
I think it is Occam’s razor in this situation. I actually think that the relationship is just left fallow and the Americans do not care. I am sure they do care. I know there is one American who certainly cares about me. He might even be watching right now, and my condolences to him. However, I will say this: The American trade balance of Canada is such a small portion, about 2% of their export value, compared to ours that without the relationships that existed in the past and that do not exist right now, I just do not think the Americans are listening.
It has been very disappointing to watch the government allow infrastructure that was set up around the negotiation of CUSMA, like city-to-city relationships, the first ministers to state-level meetings, the business leader relationships and all that infrastructure that was developed, kind of be dismantled by the current government. I do not know whether that was through malfeasance or just atrophy, but without those relationships the government is not going to care. The first rule of foreign policy is they need to be able to pick up the phone to somebody that they have broken bread with and say, “I understand where there are commonalities and differences; let us work together on this.” I just do not think that has happened. Again, we are a rounding error to the Americans in a lot of ways. We have to make them care. That would be my suggestion for the government, humbly: Rebuild those relationships.
The last thing I will say is this. Knowing one American fairly well, I know that if he does not care about something I can either build the relationship with him or I can make him pay attention. Sometimes we have to make a trading partner pay attention and that, unfortunately, does come through retaliatory measures.
We do have measures to litigate, under CUSMA, that we have raised in the House this week. The government should be expressing plans for that to Canadian industry and should be putting its American partners on notice, but I would like to think that we can actually build that relationship again. There has been a lot of atrophy, but the government cannot say Donald Trump is in office anymore, so there has to be a purposeful building up of a relationship under Global Affairs, which has seen several ministers in a very short period of time.
There needs to be political leadership, a clear direction and an imperative from the government to make that relationship work at every level, not just at the ministerial level but state to province, municipality to municipality and industry leader to industry leader. If we are not talking to each other, really it is other actors around the world that benefit from the fact that we have not integrated our supply chains, that we are not working together and that we are fighting these silly trade wars with each other instead of uniting as a continent on certain values while retaining our sovereignty and our sovereign right to our economy.
That is what I humbly submit, out of respect, in this take-note debate tonight: Build the relationship and make them pay attention.