Michel Gauthier

[Government Expenditures, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, every time the government finds itself in a bind or has its integrity questioned, it calls for a police investigation and that is the last we hear of it.

Members will remember the scandals at Human Resources Development Canada that were in the headlines just before the last election campaign, and that we have not heard of since then, Conili Star, Planta Dei Pharma, Confections Saint-Élie. We never hear a thing about them any more.

Does a police investigation into Groupaction not really mean that the government will stop answering questions, and that the whole issue will be buried so deep that we will never hear about it again? There needs to be a public inquiry.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I think that I can detect, through the questions of the secretary of state, a degree of openness and a desire to answer the pressing plea that I made.

I should point out to the hon. member that the figures that we have were provided to us by very reliable sources, namely the lumber manufacturers' association and Statistics Canada. There is also a number of other useful sources. All told, we are talking about 35,000 direct jobs in plants and in the forest, for Quebec alone.

My region is hit, but I do not know to what degree. According to the most recent figures available on unemployment in urban centres, Jonquière/Chicoutimi, or the Ville Saguenay area, is the urban centre where the unemployment rate is the highest in the country. This is related to the softwood lumber issue, because there are many workers in that sector in the whole Saguenay region.

I do not have official figures for the riding of Roberval. However, I have travelled around the riding over the past two weeks and there are almost no plants operating at full capacity, if we consider that those operating almost at capacity have, for the most part, cut back their logging operations. It has to be understood that a whole process is involved, and so when a crisis hits one end of it, the first thing to be cut is production, logging, harvesting and so on, and the plants try to gradually reduce their supplies of wood.

So, already at this point, there is not a single plant in Roberval that has not cut either logging operations or shifts or simply sent workers home or not resumed operations when it normally would.

So we have a terrible situation and I am going to give you an example. In my riding, we have a company that deals with logging trucks, and it has the highest sales in eastern Canada, in the riding of Roberval. I was told it had essentially stopped selling trucks, because logs are no longer being transported. So the market is flooded with logging trucks for sale, logging machinery, harvesters and all sorts of related equipment.

Even a layman can see that this is a terrible tragedy. When one meets with these workers, there is no need to provide them with statistics. When the cry comes from the heart and we are told that there are 15 of them who have not worked at all for six months because of the slowdown in operations, and that they do not expect to work again this year because the sawmills have been hit by the softwood lumber crisis, statistics are irrelevant. Clearly, this is a tragedy.

As for the specific measures, the Bloc Quebecois has tabled a solid document, which I invite the secretary of state to examine.

We are prepared to co-operate, to sit down with them, to supply figures, to contribute. But first, the government must send a signal to the industry—a signal of hope—and say, “Yes, we admit that there is a problem, and we are going to do something to help the industry and workers”.

Once that is done, and party lines are set aside, we can work together and come up with something that will protect people. That is our objective on this side, and I am sure that, in the end, it could be the objective of the secretary of state or of some of the members across the way. All they have to do is get the government on board.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will share my time with the member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière.

It is an honour to speak to the motion moved by the Bloc Quebecois inviting the government to set up an assistance program for the softwood lumber industry, considering the terrible crisis lumber plants and forest workers of our regions are going through at this time.

If I may go beyond partisan politics, I wish to say that the opposition has shown a sense of responsibility beyond reproach in the softwood lumber issue. First, we supported the government strategy. Never, throughout the debate, has the opposition been derelict in its duty to support the government's strategy, to advise the minister and bring an extremely positive contribution to negotiations as a whole, particularly with regard to the attitudes we should have in Canada and especially in Quebec, the region the Bloc Quebecois is most interested in. We have always tried to create a solid block with the government and with the lumber industry, in order to bring the issue to a positive outcome.

This was not the case. Against our will, that of the government and of all Canadians, we have engaged in this legal saga that unfortunately will stretch out long enough to be harmful.

The opposition no longer agrees with the government in terms of the steps to be taken to support the lumber industry, and this where we have a problem. I represent a riding where this industry is the main component of our economy. In the riding of Roberval, there are small, medium and large size sawmills. The most efficient mill in eastern Canada, Barrette-Chapais, is located in the riding of Roberval.

As the member for Roberval, softwood lumber and logging are issues that I always hold near and dear because they involve hundreds of families whose daily lives depend on the logging industry, and logging depends of what we are able to sell to the United States.

When the government refuses to take responsibility for setting up an assistance program for businesses and workers, then we stop following. We stop following the Minister for International Trade when he has the gall to tell reporters and to repeat in the House that if the lumber industry is in trouble in certain regions, it is not due to the trade dispute with the United States but rather to management problems. He says that the government will certainly not use taxpayers' money to solve management problems that have nothing to do with the softwood lumber crisis.

Even Statistics Canada admits, in a recently released bulletin, that the lumber production in Quebec is at its lowest level in ten years. I am not making it up. This is not happening because management problems in sawmills have all surfaced this year. One does not have to be a psychic or an economist to understand that.

Lumber production is limited to a strict minimum, and logging is even more limited. I want to take this opportunity to set all partisanship aside and to tell the minister about the situation as the member for Roberval. I was in my riding last weekend and I was there last week too. I went to Démo Forêt 2000, in Dolbeau-Mistassini, in the riding of Roberval, and the whole forest industry from my riding was there.

One has to see the tragedy that hundreds of workers are going through, logging machine owners and truck owners with payments of $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000 a month, people who normally earn their living honestly by transporting tree-length wood from the northern area of Lake St. John down to our sawmills. One has to see these people who, for the most part, have not worked at all since last spring.

It is not because the plant they transport lumber for is not operating anymore, but because it is working at a slower pace, since stocks are being depleted and the owners of big plants are saying “I cannot carry on forestry operations, I am dipping into my reserve. Because of the softwood lumber crisis, I will soon be running into a problem. I cannot pay the duties and produce in the same way”.

The drama is underway in the riding of Roberval. I would like to tell the minister, an MP from an urban riding, who must still have the sensitivity, as Minister for International Trade, of an MP from a rural riding or a forestry region and understand that the human and economic dramas unfolding at the moment are directly linked to the conflict with the United States. The drama has been taking place in our families for several months already. Small logging companies in the riding of Roberval are just about all at a standstill, or nearly.

On Sunday afternoon in my riding, I met the owner of a small sawmill employing 50 people in a community where there is no other employment. She told me “I stopped activity, as I usually do in the winter, but I have started again, and I am going as slowly as possible. I expect to stop soon. I cannot imagine paying 27% in taxes. My profit margin is nowhere near that amount. I will not survive. I hope the government will give us some help”.

Is it not the responsibility of the government, after waging the softwood lumber war, to help business? I give it credit for the softwood lumber war, and it must continue to fight it. What I am saying is not partisan, however, the government and its ministers also have to assume responsibility and realize that a serious drama is unfolding. The government has the means to help the industry.

As it is the victim of a trade war, the Bloc Quebecois has shown its creative side. We have tabled a recovery plan. We decided that, if the government supported the big companies with loan guarantees enabling them to absorb the cost of the American surtax, we would succeed in helping the big companies.

There are two or three ways the government could provide assistance to small businesses. We are talking about diversification and an assistance fund for small businesses. The government must provide guarantees to support small plants, to give them hope in the future, to make the banks trust them, because banks have come to realize that there is a crisis in the softwood lumber industry due to our trade war with the U.S. The government must help the workers. I can only think of the families, the heads of the families who will have to rely on an EI program which does not provide benefits for all that long—nobody can argue with that—has very high eligibility criteria and ignores older workers.

The government must set up a massive, well-targeted program for each of its client groups. It is our duty to support regional economies. The government not only has the duty, but it has the means. What a great opportunity. We have the means. The government has the means to provide assistance to the regions, the small businesses, the big corporations, families and small businesspeople who are having trouble making ends meet. It is its responsibility.

Our responsibility is to suggest ways to go about it. We have done that, but, just like the industry and the workers, we will never agree with the minister when he has the gall to say “There is no crisis in the softwood lumber industry. There are only management problems, and our regular programs will be enough”.

What we have here is an exceptional situation. I urge the government to take exceptional measures to support our regional economies; otherwise, things will turn ugly in the next few months in regions like Saguenay--Lac-Saint-Jean and the riding of Roberval. I will not be able to just stand there and watch.

[Public Safety Act, May 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, never have we seen a Prime Minister of Canada so incapable of responding to questions in the House of Commons that he passes his responsibility on to his MPs.

In committee, we all know that the Prime Minister is not there and the Minister of National Defence will not answer questions. The MPs are the ones who will.

Instead of patting himself on the back about his Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as he has been doing for the past two weeks, I call upon the Prime Minister to require his government to respect the rights of citizens. Bill C-55 violates those rights.

[Public Safety Act, May 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the privacy commissioner is justifiably concerned about the powers conferred upon the RCMP and CSIS by Bill C-55, which gives them unrestricted access to personal information relating to people travelling within Canada or to other countries.

Is the Prime Minister going to take steps to ensure that the government respects the rights of citizens, as requested by the privacy commissioner and demanded by the Bloc Quebecois?

[Microbreweries, April 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, in making such a statement, the Deputy Prime Minister just stooped to an intellectual level that I shall not describe.

What I said yesterday, and what I maintain today, is that when a person with parliamentary authority makes decisions that help the group for which her husband is a lobbyist, it is a conflict of interest. That is what I said, and I stand by that statement.

I dare him to rise and repeat what he just said.

[Microbreweries, April 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister's comments are totally, and I mean totally, unacceptable.

The chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, using her authority as chair, dismissed all of the amendments that dealt with microbreweries. As such, she settled the big breweries' problem.

In leaving out microbreweries, was the committee chair not in a total conflict of interest when she used her authority to solve the problem of the big breweries, for whom her husband works as a lobbyist?

[Microbreweries, April 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is going way too far when he says that our accusations are unfounded. The husband of the committee chair is himself the chair of the brewers' taxation committee. He lobbies for brewers. She listens to him, she follows his instructions and she refuses to include microbreweries in the bill.

And the Prime Minister has the nerve to say that this is an unfounded accusation. Generally speaking, husbands and wives do get along, and the hon. member showed us that she gets along very well with her brewer husband.

[Microbreweries, April 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Here is the situation.

On the advice of the chair of the taxation committee of the Brewers Association of Canada, who happens to be her husband, the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance is recommending to the Minister of Finance, in whose riding the John Labatt company is located, not to lower the tax imposed on microbreweries.

Will the Prime Minister admit that his government is in a tight spot and that microbreweries have very little chance of being treated fairly in such a context?

[Microbreweries, April 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister—