Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Chambly-Borduas.
Why are we debating this motion on the manufacturing sector today? Because the Bloc Québécois decided that it could not accept the fact that the finance minister's economic statement had nothing to say about the manufacturing and forestry crisis in Canada. This is old news.
Nearly a year ago, in February 2007, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology issued a unanimous report entitled “Manufacturing: Moving Forward--Rising to the Challenge”. The committee chair, who is the Conservative member for Edmonton- Leduc, and all the committee members from all parties decided that this report deserved the government's support.
Here is an excerpt from the report, which was released nearly a year ago, in February 2007:
While the rest of the Canadian economy is generally very robust, many industries within the manufacturing sector are struggling to remain competitive against the backdrop of a Canadian dollar that has risen in value by more than 40% in just four years in comparison to its American counterpart, rising and unpredictable energy costs, increasing global competition, particularly from China and India, and excessive and inefficiently designed regulations, to name but a few challenges.
The report also said:
The Committee believes that the Government of Canada should make the preservation of a competitive Canadian manufacturing sector a national goal, and that given the gravity of the challenges facing the sector, the recommendations presented in this report should be implemented in a timely fashion.
The Bloc Québécois members of the committee, of which I was one, supported this report in good faith, because it contained a comprehensive industrial strategy Canada needed in order to give the manufacturing industry a chance. Now, in November 2007, nearly one year later, and especially in the wake of the economic statement in which the government ignored all the committee's recommendations, half of one recommendation on accelerated depreciation was included in the most recent budget. There are still 21 and a half recommendations to be implemented, but the government's current attitude does not give us much hope that this will happen.
The government is acting like the economy is doing well. It keeps saying that the unemployment rate has gone down. In my riding, when people systematically go from jobs that pay $15, $18, $20 or $22 an hour to jobs that pay $8, $10 or $12 an hour, things are not so rosy. In my riding, since the 2006 election alone, Bermatex in the textile industry has closed, as have Consoltex, and Baronet in Beauce and a sawmill in Saint-Juste-de-Bretenière. Whirlpool closed as well, just before that period in 2006. Hundreds of jobs have been lost. The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology tabled a unanimous report on this—with support from all parties—but the government is still unable to follow through. We wonder why this is so. Maybe it is just the Conservatives who are currently in government who think nothing needs to be done.
I have an excerpt of comments made by Mr. Poloz, Senior Vice-President Corporate Affairs and Chief Economist at EDC, Export Development Canada, “Canada’s overall export sector is having a tough go, with growth minimal during the past four years”. Minimal during the past four years! The Conservatives went so far as to add, on page 28 of the finance minister's economic statement, a chart entitled, “Real GDP Growth by Sector Since December 2005”. There is only one sector that has had positive growth and that is the oil sector. All the other sectors, machines, paper and printing, plastics, rubber and metal products, food and beverage, primary processing of metals, textiles, clothing and leather, wood, furniture and non-metallic mineral products, cars and parts, all these sectors have experienced negative growth and it is getting worse.
On page 27 of the economic statement we read:
The manufacturing sector has been impacted the most over the past two years, with real output declining by more than 3 per cent and employment declining by more than 130,000 since December 2005.
How can an elected government, that says it is capable of managing the economy properly, sit back and do nothing? This is not a problem that cropped up yesterday morning; this problem has been around for many years and was raised unanimously by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, by members from all the parties, including Conservative members and the chair of the committee himself, who made the observations I mentioned earlier.
That is not all. Recently, the Premier of Quebec and the Premier of Ontario said the same thing, that is, that the federal government must do its part. In Le Soleil, in an editorial entitled “Impervious Harper”, Ms. Breton writes:
It is time [the Prime Minister] saw the cracks in the Canadian economy and did something about them. How can the Prime Minister say the country's economy is as solid as the Canadian Shield, when thousands of jobs have been lost in the manufacturing and forestry sectors, and even more are threatened by the soaring loonie? Of course, the Prime Minister cannot interfere in the responsibilities of the Bank of Canada. It is a fact: it is not up to politicians, but rather, the Bank of Canada to determine monetary policy and set interest rates.
He could use any number of means. There is the entire report produced by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. The report is there; all he had to do was act on it. All he had to do was have the Minister of Finance say, with complete logic, based on page 30 of the economic statement, that in order to address these problems, to tackle them and find solutions, he would implement a number of the recommendations unanimously passed by the members of this House. However, he has not had the courage to do so.
What is the underlying reason? I can think of only one. The Conservative government is only interested in promoting the oil and gas companies. Indeed, that sector's economy is doing very well at this time. Canada currently has a two tier economy. There is the economy of the west, where oil and gas companies are growing very rapidly, and the economy of the east, in Quebec and Ontario, where things are very difficult in the manufacturing sector. It is quite surprising and rather appalling that the Conservative government has not seen any measure it could take, among the many recommendations made by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. I would like to come back to this, because I think it is very important to do so.
Here are more objections. In a letter addressed to the federal Minister of Finance, Jean-Paul Gagné, who is an editorial writer for the newspaper Les Affaires, wrote: However, allow me to tell you once again that these tax cuts are ill suited. The Prime Minister, who holds a master of economy, and yourself must have learned in university that lowering the GST promotes consumption, but that includes to a large extent imported goods, and this does little for Canada's economic growth.
People have come to realize that lowering the GST by 1 point results in a direct transfer of money to China. This measure did nothing to help our manufacturing industry be competitive and make goods that can be sold at competitive prices. In no way did the Conservative government act to promote that. Rather, the result was a total free market, which means that we are almost subsidizing employment abroad, and that is totally unacceptable.
But let me get back to what Mr. Gagné was telling the Prime Minister: You put political considerations before economic governance and cooperative federalism. The future of several provinces, and even that of the country, is in jeopardy, because public authorities are not investing enough in education and innovation.
So, there is a general opposition to this measure, including by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, the Premier of Quebec, the Premier of Ontario, the editorial writer, and particularly the people who are going through tough times in each of the companies that we visited.
Last week, during the break, we heard everywhere news about sawmills going through very difficult times and about the forest industry needing some action by the federal government. As far as the manufacturing sector is concerned, there have been similar messages, but the government has in no way started to move in that direction.
That is why, today, the Bloc Québécois has brought this motion before the House. We hope to have the support of a vast majority of members in this House, Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives who also encounter this reality in their ridings. There are indeed Conservatives in Quebec who depend on the forest industry and who want the federal government to be told to go back to the drawing board. They think this is important. They want us to let the government know that the economic statement does not deal with the real problems, that there are deep problems and that the government has the financial margin to tackle these problems. In fact, the government has billions of dollars to do that and has the industrial strategy proposed by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. The government as a whole has this ability. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance must go back to the drawing board and make sure that we will not have to face tomorrow a disaster caused by the Conservative government.
