Madam Chair, the Prime Minister famously promised during the election that he would negotiate a win with the U.S. President and get a deal by July 21. Here we are in December, months after his self-imposed deadline, and there is still no win, still no deal, still no elbows and still no jobs. Since he became Prime Minister and promised an end to U.S. tariffs, they have actually doubled on autos, aluminum and steel, and they have tripled on Canadian lumber, a subject about which the member for Cariboo—Prince George will be speaking as I split my time with him. That brings the tariff to 45% on Canadian lumber, the highest in Canadian history.
Before we go to the normal Liberal transition that they make around this time, from making promises to making excuses, when they suggest that there is nothing they could possibly do about American tariffs on Canadian lumber, let us be clear: Prime Minister Stephen Harper negotiated an end to, and refund of, American softwood lumber tariffs within 79 days of becoming prime minister. The Liberal government has been in power for 10 years, and it has not been able to get rid of the tariffs that were imposed on Canada mere months after then prime minister Trudeau took office.
Furthermore, since the current Prime Minister came into office, not only has he failed to achieve the same as Stephen Harper did, with more than double the time as Prime Minister that Stephen Harper took to get a deal, but the tariffs have tripled, reaching levels not even imaginable before he took office. One might have asked what it is that he could have done differently. This Prime Minister not only failed to make softwood lumber a negotiating priority in his dealings with President Trump, but he unilaterally backed down. He reversed Canada's dispute of multiple legal disputes against the illegal and indefensible tariffs.
I will read a headline right out of Bloomberg: “Canada ends fight against some U.S. softwood lumber duties”. The article states, Ottawa “has revoked two separate claims disputing U.S. anti-dumping duties”.
It was claimed that this was a “strategic choice”, that the Prime Minister was making some kind of brilliant chess move, backing away and giving a major concession to the U.S. administration without getting anything in return.
Let us be clear: There is not a single American tariff that the Prime Minister got reduced in exchange for this concession. It was a unilateral climbdown, and since that time, the U.S. President has not only increased tariffs but also broadened them to new products not previously covered, such as cabinetry and trucks. The Prime Minister, who claimed that these tariffs were an existential threat to Canada requiring his immediate election back in the spring, now says, “Who cares?” when he is asked about how the talks are going with the U.S. We have gone from “elbows up” to “Who cares?” That is the distinction between the pre-election Prime Minister and the post-election Prime Minister.
I will tell members who cares: We care. We care about the workers at the 30 sawmills in British Columbia that have closed under the Liberal government's diplomatic failures. We care about the 150 union workers laid off at the Ear Falls sawmill.
We are concerned about the workers at Chantiers Chibougamau.
We care about the 150 workers who lost their jobs at 100 Mile House in B.C. amid market challenges. We care about the 350 workers at Sinclar Group Forest Products now facing a 40% production cut.
This is a massive industry of over $20 billion that has more people working in it than steel, aluminum and autos combined. We need these jobs. Conservatives would put negotiating the end to the softwood lumber tariffs at the front of our objectives. We would take all taxes off homebuilding so that we can use more Canadian lumber to build more affordable homes. Housing, after all, is a tariff-proof industry, because after we build those homes in Canada, they do not face U.S. tariffs. We would speed up permitting, free up land and build more homes, all of which would revitalize and rebuild our logging and mill towns so that they can have great jobs, providing the best lumber anywhere in the world.