Marcel Gagnon

[Supply, May 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with a great deal of attention to the speeches we have just heard from our Liberal colleagues in connection with the motion we are debating today.

I find it shocking that they are trying to use fine words and dulcet tones to show just how purely they are administering this big beautiful country of Canada.

However, if they abandoned their fine words and got down to some fine actions, did things properly, perhaps we would have some credibility with the public, with Canadians and with Quebecers.

It is insulting to be told all that has been done to improve the system. What I am going to say is not, however, demagoguery, but truth. When it comes to a page of advertising that costs 25 or 30 times what it is worth, rather than saying: “Maybe we made a mistake”, maybe they should admit it, correct it and call for an investigation in order to show they are prepared to do more than drone on with fancy speeches.

They talk about the appointment of an ethics counsellor. This is one appointed by the Prime Minister, reporting to the Prime Minister and writing the PM's responses. Is it not high time to stop making Canadians laugh? If we want to take a bit of the tarnish off our image and regain a bit of credibility, would it not be high time for the hon. member to admit that this system is a fake?

To be credible, an ethics counsellor should be answerable to the House and not to the person who appointed him, hired him and asks him to investigate what he wants investigated.

This is why Canadians and Quebecers are starting to be fed up with the way they are being made fools of. Money is being wasted, because when a page of advertising costs 25 times what it should, there might be something else to do than to say “Maybe we made a mistake”. There should be an inquiry. This must stop happening. The money we administer here is not ours, it belongs to all Canadians.

I would ask the hon. member, who has given a very fine speech, if she would not be more in favour of a proper correction of this situation, for instance having the ethics counsellor become a true ethics counsellor, playing a proper role and not answerable solely to the person who hired him, but rather to the House. We are talking of a neutral ethics counsellor, one who would be unbiased in any blame that had to be laid. This is what Canadians want of their government. This is what we are reproached for, when it is said that we lack credibility with the public. We are not credible. I would like to hear the hon. member's reaction to this.

[Committees of the House, May 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her kind words. I would like to confirm that across Quebec we met with people with no political affiliations. Indeed, I met with more people who sympathize with the party opposite.

Everyone was scandalized that this had not been done in eight years. Now is the time to do it, and 27 assemblies were held in Quebec. I congratulate you for doing this now, but you were not the ones that raised the issue, we pointed it out.

As my colleague said, what it is important now is that justice be done. We must give back to the poorest members of society the money that is in the coffers and that belongs to them.

My colleague said earlier that one child in five is poor. I do not know if she is aware that one senior in five does not receive the guaranteed income supplement he or she is entitled to. That is exactly the same percentage as for children living in poverty.

Are we cultivating poverty, or eliminating it? I put the question to my colleague.

We saw the reactions opposite. They said, “Are we doing enough to reach seniors”? I can tell the House that recently, in my riding, at the Caisse populaire, a person told me, “Thanks to your work, I sent someone to apply for their guaranteed income supplement. We were never told about it before”.

Everyone from the bishop to the chamber of commerce in my riding, including all of the associations in between, asked me the same question, “How is it that now we know about this issue?” These people are not all lying. Has my colleague run into this type of reaction?

[Committees of the House, May 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is too bad that I have so little time to answer.

Indeed, to make it easier for the elderly, we asked certain associations to help them. First, we asked the minister to simplify the form. There has been some improvement in this regard. We also asked all the associations to establish some committees.

I gave the example of Fierté Mauricienne, which will have four students this summer to help the elderly. First, they will find them, tell them what they are entitled to and, finally, help them to fill in the application forms. Then, there will be a follow-up so that these people will not be forgotten once again.

[Committees of the House, May 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, you do well to point that out. I am almost certain that the people I am concerned about are not former hockey players.

I am pleased to be asked this question. Our tour was carried out in collaboration with all my Bloc Quebecois colleagues, and I even offered my services to others outside the party.

I enjoyed the co-operation of all groups and associations of retired persons. We spoke to the FADOQ and the AQDR, and all associations concerned by the issue we raised. These groups have been involved in actions on the local and regional levels. There is, for instance, Fierté Mauricienne, which is going to hire four summer students to seek out these people. I would like to take this opportunity to thank these people for their co-operation. This is what success is all about.

Every year, there is a Christmas tree for the forgotten people. I have always wondered why they are forgotten. Why not stop forgetting them? Why not think of them year round? Then we would not have to organize charity at Christmas time. Perhaps less charity and more honesty is what is needed.

If they are not to be forgotten, we must work with the associations, with those who are familiar with them and can identify them. That is the way it is done in Quebec, and without any partisanship. In the Christmas baskets distributed by Moisson Montréal, Moisson Trois-Rivières and Moisson Québec, we included over 50,000 notices to locate people the Bloc had not managed to identify. The purpose of this was to find and help those in need.

I would like to thank everyone who has helped out. I am sure that, even with their co-operation, things are not finished. I do not want to hear that the problem is settled, as they claim in Verdun. My foot it is. There are $3.2 billion in the government's coffers that belongs to them. We will do our utmost to find these people and to see that the government pays them what is owing.

[Committees of the House, May 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, presented on Tuesday, December 4, 2001, be concurred in.

Mr. Speaker, in December and during all of last fall, we, at the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, were pleased to study, among other things, the issue of seniors.

For that study, the committee invited many people to speak to this issue in particular. There were discussions about the guaranteed income supplement.

We realized that a really scandalous situation had been going on for eight years across Canada and that about 270,000 Canadians were deprived from the GIS they were entitled to.

Out of these 270,000 Canadians, 68,000 live in Quebec. That is simple. When we talk about figures, we are always asked where they are coming from. Those figures were provided to the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities by the department itself. As for the figure of 68,000, we simply divided 270,000 by four since Quebecers account for about 25% of the Canadian population.

Who is entitled to the GIS? Those people who do not have enough income to have decent standard of living in their old age. The expression guaranteed income supplement says it all: it is a supplement provided to those who need it most.

We realized that, almost on purpose, the government and the department forgot about the poorest members of our society, the people who are eligible to this supplement, the people they do not look for or simply fail to find because they do not have the proper tools to do so.

Who is not missing out on the guaranteed income supplement? According to the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, whose members unanimously supported the report, and the expert witnesses we heard, these are usually the people who find themselves outside the mainstream society. They are almost always the poorest members of our society. Who are these people we are looking for? Let me list some of the target groups that the department should have tried harder to reach out to.

When we heard about this issue, the caucus of the Bloc Quebecois asked me, as the critic for seniors, to look into it. I was also asked to try to find people the Department of Human Resources Development could not reach.

I met with thousands of people at 27 meetings, press conferences and other get togethers with representatives of senior organizations in Quebec.

I realized not only that the report was not an exaggeration, but that the situation was even worse. When we go in the filed and talk to people, we realize that many more people than we thought are missing out on this program.

Who are the people that could not be reached? We have, for instance, the people who have never worked outside the home. As Yvon Deschamps, a stand-up comic from Quebec, once said, “They are the people who had too much work at home to work outside the home”.

Between 95% and 98% of these are stay at home mothers who worked hard to build our society and to make us what we are. At this late stage in their lives, they do not necessarily show up on any list of the Department of Human Resources Development to be entitled to the guaranteed income supplement. They are among the forgotten ones.

At the same time, when we try to determine who is affected by poverty in our society, we find, oddly enough, that elderly women are forgotten in the guaranteed income supplement program. These people do not file income tax returns.

During my visits, I asked them “Why do you not file an income tax return?” Someone told me, “I do not have a penny to declare. Why would I file a tax return?” Of course we have to explain to this person that it pays to do so, because it allows him or her to claim the guaranteed income supplement.

These people include aboriginal, residents of remote communities and people who do not have much of an education. In spite of the measures taken by the government to reach them, if these people can neither read nor write, if they are isolated, they have little chance of having access to the information provided by the government.

These are people who speak neither of the official languages, immigrants who have been here for a number of years and whose children have adjusted well. However, a number of these immigrants have continued to live in their own language and society. Therefore, they cannot be reached through advertising, or through the information that is provided.

These people also include disabled and sick persons. During my consultations and meetings, I met many people who were alone, sick and old. These people often no longer want to fight a system that does not help them. This group also includes, of course, the homeless.

These people, who are the poorest and who have the greatest needs, have been forgotten. Why? Because, instead of attracting them, the system excluded them. Just to obtain the guaranteed income supplement form, one must dial a telephone number and wait for hours to get service. It is true, we checked. The caller is asked to press key No. 1, 2 and 3. In the end, the poor person, who had to fight to get the information, just gives up.

After finally getting service, we are sent a form to fill out, but this form is out of proportion with the service provided by the government. So, these people give up again. The system is designed to forget the elderly and the poor, that is those who need this money the most.

The Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities came to the conclusion that the bureaucratic intricacies were part of the reasons why some of the most disadvantaged members of our society are forgotten almost on purpose.

I have just listed some facts that support this conclusion. Take for example the problems with telephone service; this is an automated service, and seniors do not get to speak to another human being. The telephone service is automated and the voice mailbox system is complex. There are also forms, which are complicated, and publicity that is obviously not working.

Incidentally, I have to admit that publicity is somewhat better now. It has improved, but it is still not very efficient. One liberal member was telling me the other day “I do not know where you find these people that we have forgotten. In my riding, we do a lot of publicity and the people who answer are not forgotten by the system”. Well, of course, when you look where there is nothing to be found, it is quite normal not to find anything.

We cannot rely only on radio, television and newspaper publicity. Publicity has to be done through word of mouth. It must rely on human contact. It must reach those who are difficult to reach for the reasons I gave earlier.

There are also administrative excesses. I have filled forms all my life. When I see the forms sent to the poor people who are often also disadvantaged on the instruction level, people who are alone and often disheartened by the system, these forms are so complicated that it is tantamount to excluding these people from the system on purpose.

There is also conflict of interest. I think that this has played a large role. For eight years now, the government has boosted its fund with $3.2 billion taken from the poorest members of society; $3.2 billion which should have gone to those most in need, to those whose income does not even top $12,648 annually if they are single, and $16,640 if they are living as a couple, whom the government has failed to locate.

The government has saved $3.2 billion on the backs of these disadvantaged citizens. In Quebec alone, some $800 million, close to $1 billion, has been saved and is in the government's coffers. This has helped to wipe out the deficit. All it did was further swell the EI fund which we so often speak about. There is $45 billion in the EI fund, which also belongs to workers, who are certainly not among the richest members of society.

This has gone into the fund, not just to eliminate the deficit, but also to pay down the debt. This debt is not something seniors and the disadvantaged owe. It is wrong to claim that these people must pay down the debt, when they barely have enough for a comfortable old age.

What we discovered was an unspeakable scandal. In every region of Quebec I visited, and even outside Quebec, since I went to Vancouver, I spoke about this issue. It is a scandal.

What makes it worse, Mr. Speaker, is that if the government discovers after the fact that people owe it money, it can collect it for five years back. If an investigation finds that you are at fault, there is full retroactivity.

In the case before us, in Quebec, I found seniors who were owed large amounts, because the information had not been provided, because it had been badly targeted, and because the government was at fault. In Quebec, I found cases where the government owes seniors up to $90,000. In Rimouski, I found someone to whom the government owes $4,000 a year. Similar cases are being found throughout Quebec.

Do you know what kind of answer we get? When we told the government that it owed money to seniors, that we had proof of this, the government told us that the retroactivity was for 11 months. It is keeping money that does not belong to it, that belongs to the poorest members of society. When these people, after going through a terrible hassle, finally get the necessary information, they are told that there is only 11 months of retroactivity.

This is unacceptable. This was also the conclusion of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. It is unacceptable to behave this way when dealing with the poorest members of society, those who helped build this country, people to whom we owe so much more than money, to whom we owe recognition and respect. It is unacceptable for them to end up in this type of situation.

The Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities made proposals to the government. We asked the government to simplify the registration procedure, for instance. It is ridiculous that there is such a complicated process to ask for that which one deserves. It makes no sense to use such complicated forms for people who are poor and often worn down by life. When people reach 70, 72, 75 or 80 years of age, they are often tired, sick or depressed, and they do not feel like fighting. When they have to fight against a system that denies them what they deserve, it is depressing.

The Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities also reached the conclusion that retroactivity must go back five years. Retroactivity must be full and total. The government must adopt the same measures when paying out money owed to the poor as they use when collecting the money it is owed.

When I owe income tax to the government, it can go back five, eight or ten years. If I am responsible, I must pay a penalty, and interest on the amount. It makes no sense that when the same thing happens in reverse, to the poorest members of society, when a lady from Sherbrooke realizes that the government owes her $90,000 in guaranteed income supplement, the government says to her “We will only give you 11 months of retroactive benefits”. Yet, if the opposite were to happen, that person would be required to reimburse the government $90,000 in addition to a penalty and interests.

I believe the committee has reached the conclusion that the government must improve the way it is doing things. It must change its procedures. The system must be made as automatic as possible. It makes no sense that a person in need of the guaranteed income supplement must reapply yearly. Everything in possible is being done to exclude people, whereas if they were honest, they would be doing everything possible to include them, if only out of respect for those who built this country.

My colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois and myself will do our utmost to see that this matter is finally settled and that more honest methods are adopted. It is not a matter of charity, but merely of honesty to those in our society who are the least well off.

What would you or I do with $12, 648 a year? If a person has less than that, and is entitled to the GIS but no effort is made to get that money to them, their situation almost defies description.

I have introduced a private member's bill in order to force the government to change its way of doing things and to apply the same approach and the same retroactive period as it does when it owes taxpayers money. It is not true that seniors are responsible for going after the money they are owed. When the government owes them money, it has to pay it back. It will have to show some basic honesty.

[Excise Act, 2001, May 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is now my turn to speak to Bill C-47, the Excise Act, 2001 respecting the taxation of spirits, wine and tobacco.

What is rather surprising about that bill is that for the first time, brewery products were completely excluded from it. My colleague, the member for Saint-Hyacinthe--Bagot moved amendments which were rejected. These amendments concerned microbreweries. More and more, in Quebec as elsewhere in Canada, brewery products are becoming regional products, products with a regional colour and flavour. As I said, these are products reflecting regional culture.

In the last number of years, microbreweries have enjoyed rapid growth, and several regions have developed beers of better quality, with a regional colour and flavour. Besides, those initiatives have generated jobs in the regions.

These small breweries should be encouraged and have a great future. They help develop our regions in terms of culture of flavours. However, they have started to compete with large breweries like Molson and Labatt in particular. Why are breweries excluded from the bill? Because it became obvious that small breweries held a market share that large breweries want to take over. There was intense lobbying, and representations were made to the chair of the committee looking into the issue. The result was the exclusion of breweries from the bill. In the long run, they will disappear.

Microbreweries give regional colour and they create jobs in the regions. Some want to eliminate them. With 4% of the market share, microbreweries automatically deprive the larger breweries of profits. I find it appalling that the government caved in to the lobby, arguing that we will come back to the issue later. We will, once all the microbreweries have disappeared.

For example, in 1997, there were more than 90 microbreweries in Canada. Today, because of these policies, there are only 30 left. In the riding of Portneuf, which is next to mine, there was a fine microbrewery that was a delight for the region and was putting the region on the map, so to speak. It is among those that have disappeared. Having known the owners personally, I found it hard to see it go, as it was creating jobs, especially as this worked out to the advantage of the biggest breweries.

Why did the government not want to deal with the taxes collected from microbreweries? It is simple. It is because it wants to replace them with American microbreweries.

For example, in the United States, the tax on microbrewery products is 9 cents a hectolitre, while it is 28 cents a hectolitre in Canada. Thus, the big breweries, Molson and Labatt, acquire the American finished product and compete on the Quebec and Canadian market, using American microbrewery products and kill our microbreweries.

It is an aberration when the government caves in to the big business lobby, which leads to the elimination of our small businesses. It is a known fact that every time microbreweries lose 1% of the market to the big breweries, the big breweries gain a further $17 million in profits.

Members will understand that, when microbreweries have 4% or 5% of the market, big breweries are worried. So they have found a way to swallow the small ones by ensuring they are no longer competitive.

This means that the 4% of the beer market that belongs to microbreweries is worth about $68 million in profits. This represents many jobs on the regional market, which is, once again, being taken over by Molson or Labatt.

We are here to make laws that will ensure greater justice. We are also here to make laws that will give regions a chance to develop. The Liberal Party, which is in power, is using its majority to crush the opposition and to pursue its agenda by having legislation passed. This is the same party that claims it represents the regions. If it were really representing the regions, it would have understood that the big breweries' lobbying was a threat to some very promising businesses at the regional level.

Not only did the government not see what was happening, but if it did, it did not care. If it realized what was happening, it helped to destroy the market for microbreweries. It excluded beer from the Excise Act and the Excise Tax Act under pressure from Labatt, which had free access to the government, in spite of our irepresentations and of the importance of this issue at the regional level.

Responding to the pressure, the government saw to it that more and more microbreweries would disappear. We have already gone from 90 breweries to 30. It is expected that with the competition by the big breweries, which are selling American products taxed at one quarter of the rate here, the beers produced in the regions by the microbreweries in Quebec and in Canada, will disappear.

It is rather depressing to see how little the government cares about small businesses. It is depressing to see the big businesses, major contributors to the Liberal Party's campaign fund, getting their greedy hands on the market share of the microbreweries in Quebec and in Canada.

We will of course be voting against this bill, but we want to condemn it with the utmost vigour.

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I did not know that it was my turn to speak. I wanted to add my voice to those of my colleagues who already spoke to Bill C-55, which replaces Bill C-42 that was withdrawn by the government on April 29, 2002.

When we see such a bill before parliament and the powers that the government will have under this bill, when we see the extent to which the government currently abuses these powers, we are entitled to oppose this bill, which provides for the creation of controlled access military zones.

We have seen what happened with other acts—my colleague talked earlier about the War Measures Act that was used in 1970—and now we have this bill that would create a military zone without any consultation with the provinces concerned. Personally, I think that this is an unbelievable abuse of power by the government.

It has been mentioned that this bill is so important that it amends some 20 acts dealing with virtually all economic activities in our country. This has an impact on these activities. It has an impact on the environment and on the whole economy. This bill amends acts that are very important for the administration of Canada and the provinces.

This power to change such major laws is in the hands of a single minister. One minister may, for security reasons, decide to turn everything upside down and to designate military zones throughout the country and Quebec.

I believe that such a bill must undergo extensive consultations. We must consult everyone in activity sectors that the bill may affect. Of course, we must consult the provincial governments that will have to face such problems on their territory, without even being informed beforehand.

I believe that the government has given itself abusive powers since September 11. One might wonder if, in wanting to control terrorism, the government is not becoming itself a terrorist. I find that the means that the government is using to control the territory and prevent terrorism are dangerous. The remedy should not become more dangerous than the illness.

Bill C-55 is evidence that the government is abusing its prerogatives and its authority to show toward the country in general, and the Quebec territory in particular, a military control that is absolutely undesirable to us.

I believe that Bill C-55 must be withdrawn, as Bill C-42 was previously. Before going so far in the protection, or so-called protection of the territory, the government must absolutely take the time to consult the people, to see what the needs are exactly and to give itself the means necessary to do so without abusing its power. I have absolutely no confidence in the government to simply act this way.

When such powers are provided to a single minister, we can expect abuse. It will be too late to criticize, and we will have to live with it.

For all these reasons, and given the number of laws that will be affected by this bill, I join my colleagues in saying that we are against Bill C-55. It is abusive and must be withdrawn.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, no matter where we live in this country, we see how this tax and the government's inaction are putting us in a dead end.

I know the member's region a little. If 25% of the softwood lumber is processed in Quebec, there would be 75% for the rest of Canada; I know that his region is badly affected. The government keeps telling us: “But wait”. Last week, it told us: “Let us wait and see if job losses are caused by the tax”. Come on!

Everyone now thinks that we have already started losing jobs. It even began a year ago, because there were talks about what was going to happen to us. There is no need to wait any longer to take action.

I totally agree with my colleague on this issue. Unfortunately, we do not have a government that likes to take quick action. It prefers to find excuses to justify what is happening to us.

The minister said that everything had been done and that unemployment insurance was there to help workers. Come on, seasonal workers are no longer being helped through employment insurance; there is almost no one left who manages to get help. It is time to act.

We are proposing, among other things, a program that would solve the problem temporarily before we can solve it definitely.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is obviously essential. One of these days, there will have to be true free trade. We cannot keep on going back to the negotiating table.

These agreements were negotiated, and we want people to believe in free trade because I think that it is the way of the future. If we do not want people to back away from it and to start believing that free trade hurts them instead of helping them, then we must be able to support the industry and its workers and make the Americans understand that we really want true free trade, without restrictions as is the case now with softwood lumber.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot say that I am pleased to rise today to address this motion. Rather, I am doing so with some sadness, because the softwood lumber and forestry industry is so important to Quebec, and particularly to my riding of Champlain. We were hoping that all the work undertaken in the past year would have yielded some results and that today we would not have to debate an issue that is at the core of our economy and that could pose problems to a large number of companies and workers who depend on the forestry industry.

I want to congratulate the hon. member for Joliette for presenting this motion and for working on this issue for over a year, that is since we first saw all this coming. My colleague worked with his usual skill in providing assistance to the Minister for International Trade, so that this issue could be settled without having to go through what we are now experiencing.

As I read the motion introduced by the hon. member for Joliette on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois, I realize that it does not even condemn the government. Once again, the hon. member for Joliette, along with his Bloc Quebecois colleagues, did a thoughtful job. We are suggesting that the government take the necessary measures, so that the unfair and, in my opinion, immoral U.S. decision impacts as little as possible on workers and industries in Quebec.

Earlier, I was surprised to hear the minister responsible for regional development boast about the government's actions and react as if we were condemning his government. He said that everything had been done to help the workers and the industry get through this trial.

Let me first say that if the term “lie” was allowed in the House, I would use it. But since it is not, I will refrain from using it.

What should be unparliamentary is not using that word, but doing what it refers to. If one did not lie, there would be no need to use unparliamentary language.

The motion by the hon. member for Joliette reads as follows: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should set up an assistance program for the softwood lumber industry and its workers, to support them in the face of the unjust decision by the American government to impose a 27.2% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber exports to the United States, the program to continue in effect until such time as this conflict has been resolved.

As hon. members can see, we are calling for assistance, not just empty words. I know that the hon. member for Joliette and the members of the Bloc Quebecois, after touring Quebec, have given some thought to a program to help the industry get through this. We are offering this program to the government. We are offering as well as the necessary cooperation to get this program accepted.

I think it would be important for the government to seize the opportunity to announce that it will do everything in its power to help the industry to get through this trial and to help the workers.

For over a year, if not longer, questions have been raised in this House on what was coming for the softwood lumber industry, and the American threat. I remember what the minister has said already “We are going to win out, anyway. The Americans are not right”. He reminded us of a previous decision where the U.S. government had to reimburse the industry, if I recall correctly, $1.2 billion for having taxed it unjustly.

I asked another question about where the money had gone. The problem in this is that, after being faced with this unfair American tax and after watching their plants close, workers in Quebec and in the riding of Champlain will not find another job, even if Canada wins before the WTO in a few months or a few years.

They need help today. It is not their fault the Americans made a bad decision. It is also not their fault that the government badly managed the matter, and this has to be recognized, as things have failed.

Workers in my riding and in Quebec are not responsible for this failure. This is why the member for Joliette is proposing measures to the government to come to their assistance, so that the doors of the industry will again be open, once the problem with the Americans is settled.

Do we have the means to do what is being proposed. The employment Insurance fund has a surplus of some $47 billion. With a fund that is so rich—that would be so rich, had the government not emptied it into its coffers in order to pay its debts with money that belongs to workers—with a fund that has this much in it, do we have the means to support business? Can we afford to help the workers? I think so.

Before concluding, I will share my time with the member for Sherbrooke.

The government must give some thought to the measures we are proposing. It could provide some help to the industry by offering loans or guarantees, perhaps, so it could continue its work and show the Americans as well that we will not always let ourselves be had.

It makes no sense to decide to close our plants with the remark, “If we do not make our case at the WTO, you will win”. But when we do win, perhaps 50% of our plants will have disappeared. Perhaps many of our workers will be gone, having decided to do something else or struggled to manage to do something else. Many of these people will be older workers, who will have trouble retraining.

In my riding, there are older workers aged 55, 57 or 60, who have worked in forestry. It is just about the only work they have done and they are extremely good at it. Can we expect a worker such as this to pick up other job skills easily if the industry in which he works closes down?

This is the time to show our solidarity. We must remember that it is workers and the industry who are contributing to the EI fund, not the government. This money is to help them through hard times. That is what people in the riding of Champlain and in the Mauricie region and elsewhere in Quebec are now going through. Over $300 million in revenues and salaries are paid by this industry to workers in my riding and in the region.

We are looking at some difficult times. The government should have the courage, the compassion and the honesty to take a portion of the EI surplus, which is there to help workers, and set up the assistance program being suggested by the member for Joliette to help the industry and workers throughout Quebec.