Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to speak to this House, this time from Chilliwack remotely. My hon. colleague, the opposition House leader, had excellent remarks. I am always pleased to share the virtual stage with him. He mentioned a few things that I want to build on.
Primarily, government members like to pat themselves on the back for their intentions. They always have good intentions and think that should be enough to get them kudos for how they operate. Good intentions do not equal good results. While the minister talked about having a heavy heart and she had good intentions to facilitate a deal, the fact is that they did not get it done. To quote Michael Ignatieff, “They didn't get it done”, so we are here today.
That is disappointing. None of us are happy that we are here debating back-to-work legislation. Back-to-work legislation indicates a failure. It indicates that there has been a failure from the government to facilitate a negotiated settlement, that the bargaining has broken down and that this is, as the minister said, the last tool in the tool box, but here we are. It is being deployed. That is something we have heard. Certainly, I spoke to the union today. It said that once the minister telegraphed, some time ago, that back-to-work legislation was an option she was considering, the negotiations fell off the table. The negotiations started to get less serious and no longer were tackling the issues at the heart of this dispute, because one side could say it would wait to see what the government does before bringing forward ideas.
I think that has been really unfortunate. As was said by the member for Vancouver Kingsway, when the pressure is removed from a negotiation, there is no more impetus to come to the best deal. A pressure valve has been released by the government here. To signal that before a strike was even under way was truly unfortunate. From the reports that we are hearing on the ground, it did have a negative impact on negotiations.
We have seen that when there is a deadline, it seems the government fails to manage a file even more than usual. When there is a hard deadline, the government's failures increase. We saw it last fall, when the CERB benefits were going to run out. We all got pushed up against the wall because the government had failed to manage the timeline. We saw it with medical aid in dying, where the government absolutely failed to respond to court deadlines. We saw it with the U.K. trade agreement, where the government has failed to meet deadlines. Now, with a seven-month truce period, the government has failed to facilitate a negotiated settlement between the union and the employer. Once again, this deadline was known. It is not a surprise, and neither is the situation at the Port of Montreal a surprise, but the government has failed to get a deal done with the parties.
We know that the Port of Montreal is extremely important to the country. It is the second-busiest port in the country and it has connections to more than 140 countries. It is the largest port in eastern Canada: 40 million tonnes of cargo were handled in 2019; 2,500 trucks a day go through that port, and 60 to 80 trains a week; there are $2.6 billion in economic benefits, $250 million in tax revenue, and over 19,000 direct and indirect jobs; a hundred billion dollars' worth of goods go through there. We cannot overstate the importance of the port, and we cannot overstate as well the difficulty that has been felt around the world because of the uncertainty that is happening at the port.
We saw that with the August 2020 shutdown, when there was a $600-million cost to the economy for a 19-day strike. It took three months after that strike for port activities to get back to where they were and for the backlogs to be cleared.
We know that, as we go forward, any work stoppage is going to have a massive impact on Canada's economy, at a time when we can afford it the least. We already have some of the highest unemployment rates in the G7. We have seen the pandemic have a devastating impact on small businesses right across the country, and the last thing they can afford is a prolonged stoppage that will impact their bottom line again.
We have also talked to the port itself, which is not the employer in this situation but is an interested party. It has indicated that since the truce ended, it has seen about a 10% drop in shipping volumes. That is before any action was taken by either side, before any work stoppage occurred. At the same time, ports in New York and New Jersey and Norfolk were seeing a corresponding increase in traffic as the shippers from around the world were making decisions on the reliability of the Port of Montreal.
That is what is at stake here: the continued questions about the reliability of the port. By failing to get a deal done, by failing to facilitate a deal, those questions remain, so people and businesses are making decisions that will impact workers not only at the port but right across the country. If the volumes do not come back and the 10% decline becomes a permanent decline, that will result in fewer union jobs. If we cannot get product across the country to manufacturing facilities, that will result in fewer jobs and the impacts will be felt all along the supply chain.
We Conservatives, too, believe in the collective bargaining process. This is the process that the government says it had good intentions to support, but it failed to help the two parties come to an agreement. We want these decisions to be made at the table, without the guillotine, if we want to call it that, of back-to-work legislation hanging over their heads. The best deals are made at the table between willing parties. Certainly we want to reiterate our support for collective bargaining, and that we are not celebrating today that the government has taken this action.
However, we do believe that Canada cannot afford a prolonged work stoppage at this port. We cannot afford to see companies choosing to temporarily or permanently shift their operations to other ports. As the CEO of the Port of Montreal has indicated, extra dollars to move a product using a different port are one thing, but reliability is non-negotiable. Companies cannot have their products tied up in port or be unsure that they will be able to get to the customers in a timely fashion.
It is unfortunate that we are here today. It is unfortunate that the government was unable to facilitate a deal between the two parties. We do not celebrate the fact that this is before us, but here we are. We have to make a choice, and we choose to support the Canadian economy and support the workers right across the supply chain who are relying on the products that come through that port.