John Duncan

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. This has been a long week for all of us. I do not normally lapse that way, but I somehow have done that today and I will try very hard not to do it again.

Will the minister and the negotiators be applying the intent of the motion to negotiating tactics as well as to policy? I just wanted to comment on some of the timing historically to try to correct the record, because I met the minister's appointed facilitator in Washington in early 2000. I followed it right through from that time until the expiry of the softwood lumber agreement. Clearly the government's position was to wait for industry and British Columbia to develop a consensus, not the other way round. The government was not committed to free trade until March 2001.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, of course I listened to the minister very carefully and congratulate the minister on the parts of his speech that were non-partisan. I have to wonder about the rest of the speech in terms of whether it was productive or not. That is all I will say about it.

The minister has said that he has 10 provinces, the territories and 95% of industry supporting the two tracks. I understand that. I do not think anybody will argue that the two track set-up is the right way to go, but there is a difference between that and the negotiating tactics. That clearly creates some distinct separations and it is not our job here to try to create divisions.

My first question for the minister is, you said in your preamble that the Canadian Alliance motion today reflected government policy. My question is this. Will you apply this to--

[Softwood Lumber, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to report that today at 1.30 p.m. all parties joined together in a non-partisan, unanimous vote to support the Canadian Alliance motion in favour of free trade in lumber. Given that the Prime Minister is still in Washington meeting with President Bush this is very timely coming from the House. I will repeat the motion. It reads:

That...the principles and provisions of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, FTA, and the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, including their dispute resolution mechanisms, should be fully applied to trade in softwood lumber, and it urges the government not to accept any negotiated settlement of the current softwood lumber dispute outside of the FTA and the NAFTA unless it guarantees free and unfettered access to the U.S. market, and includes dispute resolution mechanisms capable of overriding domestic trade measures to resolve future disputes.

I thank all hon. members who spoke to the issue this morning.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I will make it easy. It is not a question. It is a comment.

I would simply like to thank the NDP member for her support for the motion. She is pragmatic in carrying on with this issue.

We need non-partisanship on this issue. We need common sense, not ideology. We would be sending exactly the wrong message from this place if it ended in political bickering rather than the plight to our forest workers, communities and industries.

I thank the hon. member for her support.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member on his call for unanimous support for the motion. It is the right message to be sending.

I want to comment on the part of his talk about government support, a government backstop. The obvious question which comes to mind was asked by the hon. member for Etobicoke North. Will this not be attacked as a subsidy by the U.S.?

The reality is that if the program is set up in a fashion that has already been quite detailed in its proposal to the government, this backstop would be in the way of a government guarantee of loans from commercial lending institutions. The actual amount of any subsidy that could be configured into that would be so marginal it would not really be worth pursuing.

Besides that, the U.S. is prepared to play hardball on this issue. Why would we not play some hardball as well? Maybe they would just want to use the WTO and that supports the whole thing.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make reference to one of the final points the member for Etobicoke North just made. I appreciate his speech and his reference to some backstop provisions should negotiations fail.

The member also talked about the consideration for bonding in terms of tariff requirements. I want to make it clear that those requirements, after May when they would be implemented in the absence of an agreement, would actually be cash requirements not a bonding requirement.

Is the member aware of anything that Export Development Canada is planning to do or is initiating in the way of backdrop studies or anything else to further its ability to respond quickly on that issue, because everything that has been done up until now has been non-fruitful?

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I do realize that the time is short, but the parliamentary secretary did make a couple of statement to which I feel I must respond.

Number one, the parliamentary secretary made reference to the fact that we had a point in time when we had no trade critic. That is not the first time I have heard all of this. The important thing to recognize is that I was involved and responsible for the softwood lumber file as the forestry and mining critic and that went with me to international trade. If proof of that is needed, he can go to my website and see that when I was forestry and mining critic in June 2000 our softwood lumber position, approved by caucus, was right there. I wrote it.

In terms of the other statement that the parliamentary secretary made, that it did not really matter what the government signalled because automatically on March 31, 2001, we would revert to free trade, that is the very question we kept asking the government: Are you going to let it expire and go to free trade or are you going to extend it? There were a lot of signals that you were prepared to do it. All of Canadian industry wanted to know what you were going to do and so did the American consumer--

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of things and I have already made reference to them. One is the fact that we did not make alliances when we could have simply because the government refused to take a position until March 2001.

I had been meeting for 15 months with members of the American consumer alliance before March 2001. Instead of them being able to spend full time worrying about the U.S. congress and shifting its views, they were still preoccupied with where the Canadian government would position itself. There was no point in them lobbying the U.S. congress in a serious manner, if the Canadian government was not on the same page. There was huge wasted time and opportunity there.

Another thing is to have resolve to carry this forward we need to have a contingency plan in place for our forest workers and our industry in case the negotiations are unsuccessful. Everybody knows the government has not taken those actions. It will be scrambling should negotiations fail.

We have pointed that out for some weeks now. It may be months. To this date the minister of trade responsible for Export Development Canada has not even ensured that Export Development Canada is developing the background and the plans necessary to implement some kind of response for a contingency plan. That is clearly unacceptable.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, first, I know where the pressures came from for the quota system. I know they came from British Columbia. I know that was a very difficult time because British Columbia had so dominated the forest industry in 1996. That led the government to adopt the quota system. I did not say it imposed it on the industry. I said it imposed it on the country basically.

However what surprised me was long after the industry in British Columbia and other parts of Canada realized that it was not working, the government still defended it and refused to adopt a free trade posture right up until March 2001, the very month it expired.

In terms of the other point, if we look at the U.S. response to the Canadian proposal of last weekend, we find that the dispute resolution mechanism is binding on us but not on the U.S. That will simply not work. I am saying that is unacceptable. If it is not binding on both parties, then I am sorry, we have to go with NAFTA or WTO.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I do not stereotype Americans. I was talking about the U.S. lumber lobby, not Americans. We have more friends in the U.S. on this lumber file than we have protagonists. I have gone out of my way to make friends in congress on this issue and to form a strong bond with the American consumers for affordable homes. I refuse to stereotype our relationship with the U.S. I also do not appreciate the stereotype that the member is trying to apply to the Canadian Alliance. The Deputy Prime Minister is prone to doing that as well and I do not think that is productive.

What is more important for us to do today here is to display some kind of consensus from the Canadian parliament that we are seeking free trade. That is the best possible message we can send to the U.S.

In terms of this whole question of would it not be better to negotiate rather than go through a longer timeframe dispute resolution mechanism, all things being equal, that would be wonderful. However, if we are unilaterally in a rush to come to judgment, given certain circumstances, that can only lead to us getting into a one-sided deal that favours the other side. We cannot have a unilateral rush. It has to be both parties that want to resolve this, with an equal sense of urgency. Otherwise we are placing ourselves at a disadvantage.