Mr. Chair, I thank my colleagues from all the parties for taking part in this important debate on the apparel and textile industry.
This evening I want to talk about the apparel and textile industry from the perspective of my riding of Brome—Missisquoi. I especially want to talk about a few companies located in my region, namely C.S. Brooks and Difco in Magog and Consoltex in Cowansville. There are many other companies in my riding as well. I want to pay special tribute to the workers in this industry, who do such extraordinary work.
The role of the MP is to be a liaison between the needs and concerns of the people from his riding and Ottawa. He must take these needs and express them here in Ottawa.
The textile industry as a whole is a sector with problems. It is in crisis. This entire industry in Canada employs roughly 150,000 workers, nearly 50,000 of which work in the textile sector proper, whereas the other 100,000 work in the apparel sector. My riding of Brome—Missisquoi has far more workers in textile than in apparel. This is important because each group has to be able to find its way in the current economic context.
In the apparel sector, last year I had the opportunity to visit, among others, an industry in Montreal called Peerless. In that one plant, 3,000 workers were spread out over three floors, thus 1,000 workers per floor. The work they do there is quite extraordinary. These people also need support. The textile industries in Brome—Missisquoi, like all the other regional businesses in Quebec, certainly need our support.
Earlier some of my colleagues mentioned the importance of consultations. I held consultations in Brome—Missisquoi. Just a few weeks ago, in Magog. I met with employers and employees from plants in that town as well as the mayor, Marc Poulin, the industrial relations counsellor and Ghislain Goulet from Magog's economic development office. Even though C.S. Brooks and Difco are both on strike right now, everyone was seated around the same table to talk about what could be achieved in a positive manner for our industry in the coming years.
Recently, I did the same thing in Cowansville with workers of Consoltex, in order to know what their needs were. We can say all we want here, but we are not those workers and employers. It is important to know what they want exactly in order to save their industry. I set up a meeting with, among others, the mayor of Cowansville, Arthur Fauteux, the workers as well as the managers of the two Consoltex plants of this town.
My colleagues from the Liberal Party representing ridings in Montreal, the Beauce region and Eastern Townships, our region, worked very hard on this. Last spring, the government announced some $60 million, half of which was for the apparel industry, and the other half for the textile industry.
This fall, in response to a question of the opposition asked two or three weeks ago, the finance minister said that he would shortly announce an improved program, a substantially improved government support program. That is what the minister answered to the opposition question.
When I heard that, I said to myself that what was important to know is what the Brome--Missisquoi textile industry needed in terms of this improved support, this substantially increased amount that will be made available, since the minister announced it.
Following the meetings I spoke of earlier, I set up, here in Ottawa, a meeting with representatives of four departments, that is Finance, Economic Development, International Trade and Industry, to which the mayors, unions, workers and employers were also invited.
There were about 30 people at that meeting. We wondered what we could say in the announcement so that the textile sector—the high priority sector in my riding—could get some benefit out of this and not only survive but become more dynamic in the marketplace.
And so we had an extraordinary meeting. I will briefly list the points raised by the people from the factories, not the MPs but the people who work in the factories and the owners as well.
First, they said that if we were going to present them with another government program, they wanted it to be flexible. That is what was delivered in today's announcement: flexibility. Why? Because they told us that one part of the money to help them would go to C.S. Brooks, whose needs were not the same as Difco's, while Difco does not need the same thing as Consoltex. One of them needs equipment, another needs marketing assistance, and another needs other things. They asked us for a program that is not “one size fits all”. It is a program in which each business can find what it needs.
In the announcement of the $50 million in additional funding, that is what we find. That announcement also says that up to $3 million will be available for equipment. There are all sorts of measures showing flexibility, exactly what the workers and owners asked for yesterday, here in Ottawa.
Secondly, there is POWA. We talked about that as well, and both employers and employees asked if there was some way of reviving this program to assist older workers. I understand that my Liberal colleagues are working right now to discover what kind of measures could provide something resembling POWA.
Moreover, the union people asked questions concerning the rescue measures and asked whether we might stretch the deadline a year or two past the 31st. All together, we discussed the rules of the international market. We agreed that the rescue measures were complicated, because of the argument that has to be made and the trade tribunal and so forth.
We also talked about LDCs, the least developed countries. There are 48 of them in the world. Two years ago, the government said to those least developed countries that they would be able to export their goods and services to Canada without having to pay taxes or customs duties, without being subjected to quotas, and so on. However, those involved in that industry do not want these least developed countries to serve as transit countries for products that come from elsewhere, transit through these countries and that finally arrive here, in Canada. So, these people asked us to work to tighten the rules of origin.
They also mentioned something else. Someone proposed to set up an export program for textile manufacturers. I listened to this suggestion very carefully, because I find it interesting to hear industry people and their proposals. As regards that textile export program, they suggested, among other things, that we consider the following facts.
Year in year out, Canada imports $5.6 billion worth of clothing. There is no Canadian content; these clothes are imported into Canada. If we put Canadian fabric in these clothes that come from abroad and imported them while looking at what could be done in terms of customs duties, taxes and so on, we could have some Canadian content in these imports that total $5.6 billion annually. We could even have a small label saying that these garments were made with Canadian fabric. This is a suggestion that was made to us yesterday by the management and the unions.
I will have to shorten my presentation, because I am told that my time is almost up. However, I want to say that these are truly exceptional transition measures. They can be of tremendous help to the industry, but we should not stop there. We must ensure that workers and employers contribute their ideas, because they are the ones who work in that industry. They must suggest to us approaches to ensure that we will not only maintain the textile industry in our country as we know it, but that we can also expand it. In my riding, these are jobs which, including fringe benefits, pay an average of $45,000 annually.
These are jobs that we must not lose in Canada. These are extraordinary workers.
