Dick Harris

[Multiculturalism, March 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, again, this was no mistake. This was a well rehearsed question and answer. She knew what she was going to say. She named the city of Prince George. She said that there was a letter from the mayor of Prince George. The next day she said, in her hollow apology, that maybe it was not Prince George and maybe there was no cross burning, but she still maintained she had a letter.

Could the government instruct the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women to produce that letter to the House at the earliest possible date next week and to the media, which I am sure is dying to see it as well?

[Multiculturalism, March 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the House the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women delivered what could be called the most hollow of apologies for what she termed a mistake. There was no mistake.

Her statement about a cross burning incident and a letter in Prince George was in fact a well rehearsed fabrication. There was no letter from the mayor, there was no cross burning incident and, of course, it never happened in any city in British Columbia.

Could the secretary of state tell us why, in a callous attempt to justify her own role, she chose to embellish among one of the ugliest sides of our society? Why did she do that?

[Multiculturalism, March 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, her apology was not an apology. She still indicated that perhaps racism and hate activities were going on in Prince George, even though not the specific ones she mentioned the day before.

This is yet another smear on the people of Prince George. The minister has to do the right thing. If she will not resign herself, will the Prime Minister fire her today?

[Multiculturalism, March 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the House, the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism recklessly and mercilessly compared my hometown of Prince George to apartheid in South Africa and Kosovo. She claimed racism was rampant in British Columbia and that indeed crosses were being burned on lawns in Prince George.

This we knew was false yesterday and we know it is false today. Her half-hearted attempt at an apology this morning, hidden selectively in some well rehearsed, feel good phrases, is not enough. I ask for an unequivocal apology to the people of Prince George and for her resignation.

[Privilege, March 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I asked in the House for an apology. There was no apology from the minister today. We would like her to table the letter she received that she used in her statement yesterday.

[Privilege, March 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Yesterday I stood in the House on a point of order in response to her malicious and false accusations against the people of Prince George. Today, yesterday as she spoke, and last night, we had absolute confirmation that she was indeed absolutely wrong in her statements.

She did not come to the House today because she voluntarily wanted to. She came because she was caught in a falsehood.

[Points Of Order, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, during question period the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women, a person well-known for her intolerance of anyone who does not agree with her point of view, made a vicious comment by saying that if people want to know about racism and hatred they should go to British Columbia.

She further went on to say they are burning crosses in Prince George as we speak.

Prince George is where I have lived for more than 40 years. My colleague, the hon. member for Prince George—Peace River, represents the good, decent, honest people of that city. It is revolting that the minister would cast such vicious and mean-spirited aspersions on the people of Prince George, British Columbia.

I ask that the minister be called on to withdraw the statement and to apologize to the House, to the people of Prince George and, indeed, to all Canadians for such a vicious comment.

[Supply, March 15th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, as a member from British Columbia I appreciate the time to ask some questions and make some comments.

It is important to reiterate to the member and the government the reason this is such an exceedingly important issue to Canada and in particular to my province of British Columbia. It is probably not known by the member that on a balance of trade net benefit basis the forest industry outperforms every other sector of export in Canada. It has a net benefit of some $39 million to Canada on the balance of trade. That is important. It employs about 130,000 people in Canada and as a high as 50,000 or 60,000 in the province of B.C. in work related to the forest industry.

The province of British Columbia has seen the complete devastation of the forest industry caused by to a very large degree the softwood lumber agreement we have had to work through over the last five years. It sounded pretty good in the beginning. We were to find a way to deal with the constant threats of countervail.

In fact, what has happened is that we have had a market distortion which has been disastrous to our economy in British Columbia. We have had the creation of mills that have quota and mills that have not. It is not a level playing field. Because of their obligation to the ministry of forests and to their timber licences to cut the wood and process it, they have had to in effect literally dump the wood in the domestic market at prices far below their costs to produce it.

It is having a disastrous effect and the government has to realize that. In the city of Prince George, which is almost wholly dependent upon the forest industry, the unemployment rate is somewhere around 17%. In my riding it is somewhere around 15% overall because of the softwood lumber agreement.

Our mills have simply used their quotas. They are into their expensive penalty wood. They have had to lay off people because they cannot afford to carry on business that way, so when I ask the government where the public display of good stewardship of our lumber industry has been, I am very serious.

There has not been a public display. The government has admitted that it has been working on it for the last year, but there has not been an expression to the people in the forest industry in British Columbia that the the government is working on this and understands the crisis and the severity of the situation. The government has left the forest industry and workers in British Columbia wondering whether on March 31 the world is going to come to an end for them. It is going to get considerably worse. They do not know that the government has been working on it, if indeed it has, but we will take the government at its word.

I would like to ask the member for Yukon if he understands that on March 31 the lifeblood of the forest industry in British Columbia will be at the highest crisis point it has been at in decades. If so, has he and will he, along with other members of the Liberal government, continue to impress upon the Minister for International Trade that we must not allow the Americans, by way of this large lobby group, to push us around on this like they have traditionally done?

Canada cannot buckle under on this one. The member from Thunder Bay said earlier that we cannot now move to another natural resource and start to rattle sabres at the U.S. That is exactly what the U.S. has done to us. It has singled out the lumber industry and wants to go to war on it. Why should it be fair for them when it is not fair for us? That is my question. How can we allow the Americans to zero in on lumber and say we are unfair when we are not prepared to say that if that is the way they want to play we are going to zero in on something that they really need? What does the member have to say about that?

[Supply, March 15th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the member's comments. I will refer first to what the minister said when he was in the House. In answer to a question I had asked, he said that his department had been working on the looming deadline for softwood lumber for quite some time.

I was correct in my comments when I said that may be true, but the fact is that the government has not been revealing that to the Canadian public or to workers in the forest industry, which has caused a lot of consternation and apprehension. It is only within the last several weeks, subsequent to the United States starting its sabre rattling, that the minister said that the government has been working on this and that it has started to take a tough stand on behalf of Canada.

I wonder what progress has been made, for example, in dealing with the other large lobby groups in the United States, such as the American coalition for affordable housing and the lobby group that represents lumber retailers and builders in the United States. What has Canada done to try to draw on their strength as lobbyists to help us with the U.S. government and the senate? Where do we stand?

We cannot get into negotiations per se on softwood lumber because once we get into negotiations it commits us to negotiating another agreement. That is an important point. We could have high level discussions, but we would like to know, as would thousands of Canadian forestry workers, where we are in these talks. They see a looming deadline three weeks from now. They hear sabre rattling from both sides. Where are we in these talks?

[Supply, March 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's seeming support for this motion, but I have some questions to ask him about the fact that the government appears to have come considerably late to this party.

As far back as three years ago in the softwood lumber agreement the signs and evidence of market distortion, the harm it was causing our industry and indeed the creation of the have and have not quota holders were becoming quite prominent. It is only within the last several weeks that the minister and the government have been talking about this issue in a public fashion. The minister may well have been talking to industry leaders over the last year but it has only been in the last several weeks that he has talked about it publicly.

As a result, the Americans have beaten us to the punch and have come out with their sabre rattling. We have had lots of time to work on this. We have had as much as two or three years to try to drum up support south of the border for our position with the coalition of senators.

Why has the minister and the government come so late to the party in a public way?