Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou.
Usually, the best thing a person can do is to tell the truth. Let us tell the truth this evening. The government has never been willing to provide real support for the forestry industry. That is rather easy to prove. My colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot did so earlier when he said that the words “softwood lumber” do not appear anywhere in the Minister of International Trade's mandate letter. That shows how much this government cares about the forestry industry.
Meanwhile, the forestry industry is currently facing a perfect storm. If we look at everything the forestry industry is dealing with, we see that this economic sector that supports our regions is in jeopardy. This evening we are talking about punitive tariffs. If nothing is done and if the minister does not grow a backbone by then, these tariffs may increase from 8% to almost 14% in August. The federal government's financial support for the forestry industry is pathetic. I will come back to that later. It is absolutely nothing. It is peanuts compared to the support being given to another natural resources industry, the oil industry. It is downright appalling.
Our forestry sector has been going through major transformations over the past 15 years because the pulp and paper industry is gradually disappearing. We need to replace it with something else, but, unfortunately, we never get the financial support we need to make that happen. We also have a crisis caused by the woodland caribou, especially in Quebec, with the Minister of Environment threatening to enforce an order under the Species at Risk Act that would scuttle the efforts of many communities in Quebec that depend on the forestry sector. Then there was last summer's forest fire crisis.
All these factors add up to a perfect storm for the forestry sector. I think the only person who does not see that is the Prime Minister. Quebec MPs do not see it either. I rarely hear Conservative Quebec MPs talk about forestry. It is not just rare, it is practically unheard of. I have never seen them show any interest in the forestry sector, even when we studied it at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources. I am sure that Quebec is, by far, the biggest player in Canada's forestry sector. In 2000, the sector accounted for 95,000 jobs in Quebec. By 2010, that number had fallen to 64,000. The latest figures show 59,000 jobs in 2020. Why the decline? It is because the federal government refuses to support the forestry industry.
I would like to give members a very simple example. In the forest sector, no support is ever provided by Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions or any federal government program for primary processing. Why is that? Whenever primary processing is involved, people are automatically told to go through Global Affairs Canada to request federal government support and, de facto, the request will be refused. Let us try to name another sector of economic activity unable to obtain any federal government support. They are few and far between. However, this is what happens. The federal government does not want to address this issue.
For small and medium-sized lumber mills that produce roughly 300,000 cubic metres a year, the main customers are local, in other words, in Quebec or Canada. Even if they do not do business with the United States, they are paying a heavy price for the trade dispute we are in, because they cannot get federal government support. The government bragged about planting two billion trees. Does anyone know why the government is having trouble sending those trees to the forestry people who could plant them? It is because there is a fear that they will be harvested. If those trees are harvested, the federal government says that would violate its trade agreements with the United States. That is fear for fear's sake. They are essentially saying that since those trees might be harvested in 70 years, we might as well not plant them. That shows how much courage the federal government has.
In closing, I would say that this is a sad spectacle, one that has been going on for more than 20 years. There has never been any real willingness on the part of the Liberals or the Conservatives to support the forestry sector.