Bob Zimmer

[December 1st, 2021]

Madam Chair, I would like to thank the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier for sharing his time with me tonight.

Actions speak louder than words, and that is a theme I am going to get to. The lack of a softwood lumber agreement has affected my riding greatly. We are in northern B.C., where lumber and forestry are what we do. I want to take us to the time of Obama and the Prime Minister, back in 2015, when there was a 100-day promise. Let me read from an article from The Globe and Mail in March 2015:

Two-thirds of the way through the 100-day countdown set in March by [the Prime Minister] and President Barack Obama to agree on the parameters of a new bilateral softwood lumber deal, time is fast running out to reach an agreement before U.S. election fever overwhelms the negotiations.

The Canadian lumber industry is still hoping that talks at the bureaucratic level will have advanced far enough that Mr. Obama and [the Prime Minister] can iron out what differences remain when they meet at the North American Leaders' Summit in late June.... The last [softwood lumber agreement] ended in October 2015 [I might note] with the expiry of a 2006 deal that instituted managed trade between the two countries that are supposedly the world's biggest champions of free trade...

Here we are, with a bunch of promises from many members across the way that this is going to get done. They are saying, “Just relax, we need more time.” That promise was made six years ago, and we still have not seen that delivered. That is why this discussion is happening tonight, and I am glad for the opportunity we have.

It even escalated. We saw the President of the United States, and I was about 20 feet away from him when he came to Ottawa to speak, and there were actually expectations. The Conservatives had lost the election, and we were thinking this was maybe a silver-lining moment for us: At least we were going to get a good trade deal across the line. President Obama gave a great speech in Centre Block, right in front of the Speaker, and we expected the deal to get signed that afternoon. There was nothing. All we saw was Air Force One leaving Ottawa with no new softwood lumber agreement.

Fast-forward to 2021, and where has the softwood lumber agreement gone? I was a member of the natural resources committee and the international trade minister was there. She had just met with the new Biden administration. They had met in a bilateral meeting. My obvious question to her was whether she had discussed softwood lumber in their meeting. She was very vague. When somebody is very vague about these things that are very specific and very important billion-dollar deals, I start to get a little suspicious.

It became obvious in an article in Politico. This is from Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative. This is after she promised that she had been discussing this with the trade negotiator and that they were actually working on a softwood lumber agreement. This is what the trade representative from the U.S. said:

In order to have an agreement and in order to have a negotiation, you need to have a partner. And thus far, the Canadians have not expressed interest in engaging.

It is pretty serious when the U.S. trade rep is saying they want to do this, but so far the international trade minister has not even reached out. Therefore, those promises ring hollow and again it goes to my theme: Actions speak louder than words. What are the Liberals really doing? They cannot try to infer that they want a softwood lumber agreement. They have to be very firm about these things.

I might add that a previous Conservative government got the first one done in 2006. We renewed it in 2013, and it expired in October 2015. Some are saying over there that they cannot get it done. We got it done twice, so we can get it done and it is proof that, if the intention is really there, the current government could get it done too.

I will finish with this. This is a statement from the minister from her own Global Affairs website, on October 6, 2021, in Ottawa, Ontario. It states:

Today, the Honourable...Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, met with Katherine Tai, United States Trade Representative, on the margins of the OECD Ministerial Council Meeting in Paris, France....

[The Minister of International Trade] reiterated her concerns about Buy America provisions, U.S. tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber and solar products,....

That was October 6, 2021, when negotiations were supposed to be happening all along. Actions speak louder than words. We want some action on softwood lumber from the government.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 30th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I want to recognize my great Conservative colleague from Quebec. The Liberal member across the way who has criticized the member does not seem to understand what he is asking, which is why the Speech from the Throne did not recognize our natural resource sector and the people who are employed in that natural resource sector. They are looking for a government to defend them and defend the jobs that come from those natural resources being developed.

I would ask my great Conservative colleague from Quebec to answer that question.

[Canada-U.S. Relations, November 29th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, the government continues to assure Canadians that negotiating a new softwood lumber agreement with the U.S. is a priority, yet just a few months ago the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, was quoted in Reuters as saying, “In order to have an agreement and in order to have a negotiation, you need to have a partner. And thus far, the Canadians have not expressed interest in engaging.” Now the U.S. has announced that it will go ahead with doubling the softwood lumber duties on Canadian producers.

Why will the government not come to the table and just get the deal done?

[Flooding in British Columbia, November 24th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I want to give a shout-out to everybody tonight who really have made the debate about the people of Abbotsford, the Lower Mainland up to the Fraser Valley and in the interior. It is really about the people and getting the people the help they need. That is what we are talking about tonight.

As my colleagues from Abbotsford and Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon have mentioned so many times, it is about the people.

We used to live in Abbotsford for four years when I went to university, and it became part of our family. It is where they grew up as little children. Again, we need to focus on what the needs are. We need to focus on the emergency there now, the storm that is going to come tonight and the storm that is possibly going to come next week.

We are calling on the federal government to help now in any way we can to do that. Again, it is why we are here tonight. It is late in Ottawa, it is about a quarter after 11, but I just wanted to speak to the member and call on the government to do all we can to help the people of Abbotsford.

[Winter Recreation Plan, June 23rd, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, community leaders throughout my riding are alarmed by the lack of genuine consultation around caribou and other closures.

The recent release of the province’s draft winter motorized recreation management plan in South Peace is a direct result of the caribou partnership agreement signed by the current Liberal government in 2020.

The B.C. Snowmobile Federation, the Concerned Citizens for Caribou Recovery, and the municipality of Chetwynd have come out strongly against this proposed plan. It became clear that their recommendations to maintain public access to vitally important areas while conserving caribou habitat were flatly ignored. What did the Liberals do with all this sound advice from outdoor experts? They threw it out the window.

It is time for the government to recognize its failings with arbitrary land and marine closures. It must ensure decisions made are based on science and sound advice from our communities. These decisions will have a direct impact on the local economy and the way of life. It looks like more closures are on the way with 30 by 30 and other initiatives supported blindly by the government.

It is time for the government to stop ramming through its agenda and start listening.

[Petitions, June 22nd, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from over 55,000 individuals. Community leaders throughout Northeast B.C. have expressed grave concern over the lack of consultation with regard to the proposed caribou recovery plans.

The petitioners call upon the provincial government to further consult users, stakeholders, businesses and local government, immediately begin economic and socio-economic impact studies on the Northeast Region, and provide baseline data on populations and relevant science-based studies to support closure and recovery plans. Therefore, they call upon the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to work with the province of British Columbia to ensure that the local voices are being considered, including consulting further with community leadership and caribou experts on the ground.

[Petitions, June 22nd, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

The petition calls upon the Government of Canada to recognize the service by Canadians in the regular forces, reserve military forces and others who have taken an oath and sworn to defend our nation and who have completed 547 days or 18 months of uninterrupted honourable duty in their service to Canada from September 2, 1945 to the present day, and in perpetuity, by means of creating and issuing a Canadian military service medal to be designated the “Canadian military service medal”.

[Government Business No. 10—Broadcasting Act, June 21st, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I have an article in front of me entitled “Heritage minister ignored his own officials over controversial Bill C-10, documents reveal”. It says:

Months before the Liberal government removed a section of Bill C-10 in a controversial amendment [the] Heritage Minister...was told by officials within his own department that it was an “important limitation” on regulatory powers.

What does the member say to all the critics of Bill C-10? It is not just the Conservatives, not just people on this side of the House who are criticizing this bill. What does he say to those people?

[Broadcasting Act, June 21st, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I asked the minister a question again in the House on the topic of Bill C-10, unfortunately not dealing with the subject of Bill C-10, but dealing with the issue of ramming it through the House.

Recently, we saw the government guilty of trying to ram through a bunch of amendments, much to the surprise of many of us here who respect the process, respect committee work and yet again, we see the government time after time simply trying to sidestep the parliamentary process. We saw that example today again in the House, where the health officer who was supposed to produce documents as requested by the House still refused to do it, on the advice of the government.

With such an important bill as Bill C-10, why does the minister feel he needs to ram it through the House?

[Fisheries and Oceans, June 21st, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, the Pacific salmon strategy of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is nothing but more empty promises. The Liberal government has been in power for six years and, once again, it has failed to listen to our B.C. fishers to develop and implement an effective plan to conserve and restore Pacific salmon. We do not need anymore studies. We do not need anymore stall tactics. We have experts on the water who know what needs to be done, and it needs to be done now.

When is the minister going to start listening to B.C. anglers and get to work on restoring our B.C. public fishery?