Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to enter into the debate on the softwood lumber deal.
Speaking on behalf of the people whom I represent, I want to say that we believe firmly in our hearts that this deal is bad for Canada. It was poorly negotiated. It undermines our interests. It serves only to protect American interests. Therefore, we have to speak profoundly against it.
It is part of a worrisome trend. I can quote the Vancouver Sun, which published the details of a leaked letter from the Bush administration to the U.S. lumber lobby. In that letter in the Vancouver Sun article, the American administration confirmed that the objective was to, in the administration's words, hobble the Canadian industry.
Nor does this sellout end there. Of the $1.2 billion in illegal duties they left on the table, $450 million will go to the Americans to grease the re-election wheels of the protectionist American government that is facing tough fights in the upcoming mid-term congressional elections. So Canada's timber industry will be subsidizing the ongoing illicit attack on itself. We are going to subsidize and pay for their renewed ability to keep attacking us. We know they are protectionist and that is what they will continue to do.
There is more. When the industry balked, the Conservative government began its bullying tactics, which now have become familiar tactics. The Globe and Mail quoted a senior government official warning that opponents to this deal “should prepare themselves for the consequences of rejecting it and they might want to start contemplating a world where Ottawa is no longer in the business of subsidizing softwood [trade] disputes”.
It makes us wonder whose side the Conservatives are on. On whose behalf were they negotiating? I have negotiated a lot of collective agreements in my former life as a union leader, and I can say that this could not have been hard bargaining. Our negotiating stance was flawed from the premise. Our negotiating stance was on our knees. It was saying, “Please, please, U.S., leave us with some of our dignity and our respect and allow us to maintain our industry”. When we go in with a bargaining stance on our knees, we are going to come out with a bad package.
They have put together here a softwood deal that will be managed of the people, by the people and for the people, but it is the American people. In fact, this is one of the most shocking things about this deal, which I have come to learn recently. As a fiercely proud Canadian nationalist and if for no other reason, this is a good enough excuse to vote against this deal.
It turns out that as an aspect of this deal there is an unprecedented clause that requires provinces to first vet any changes in forestry policy with Washington. In other words, if the Province of British Columbia wanted to substantially change perhaps its rate of harvest because of a pine beetle infestation or some such thing, it will be duty bound to consult Washington first--in other words, get permission--or else it will be in breach of this deal. The Americans then can unilaterally state that the deal is broken and they can carry on with their illegal tariffs.
I keep coming across good reasons why any patriotic Canadian would not participate in what I call economic treason of this sellout in the softwood industry.
A lot of people may not remember this, but this is the second time a Conservative government has snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory on this lumber file. In 1986, the GATT, the World Trade Organization predecessor, issued a preliminary finding on the legality of U.S. lumber duties against Canada. Brian Mulroney's government at the time, hell-bent on negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S., aborted the challenge.
We were about to win it and the Mulroney government aborted the challenge just before it came down in Canada's favour. The Conservatives wanted to make the argument that they needed the free trade agreement because the current regime was not working. These findings were not published until after the free trade agreement came into effect.
It seems like a pattern is developing here. The Conservatives are willing to undermine the best interests of Canadians to make some ideological victory in their own minds or to pander to the demands of the Americans.
The same is true of the assault on the grain industry with the government's overt attack on the Canadian Wheat Board. In fact, there are real parallels between the sellout on the softwood deal and the assault on the Canadian Wheat Board. Both are in the interests of and at the service of the Americans.
We know that the Americans began gunning for the Canadian Wheat Board before the ink was even dry on their initial signature on the free trade agreement in 1989. We know that. Since then, the Wheat Board has been subjected to 11 separate U.S. trade attacks. In the same pattern as the lumber duties and tariffs, the U.S. is claiming unfair subsidies.
The U.S. does not just want to eliminate one of its competitors in the world wheat market for its multinational agribusiness, but it wants its agribusiness to capture the price advantage enjoyed by superior Canadian wheat. It really comes down to that. The Americans' opposition to the Wheat Board is not even ideological, although they do allege that it is socialism, realized by the fact that we act collectively in getting the best price for our farmers through single desk selling. Really, it is the price advantage that we enjoy and earn because our wheat is superior. Our product is superior.
This is another issue in this worrisome pattern that has become the defining characteristic of the new Conservative government, a pattern which seems to be to integrate Canada's security, defence and foreign policies with the U.S. and shred our competitive advantage against the U.S. in the matter of lumber and wheat. It is a worrisome motif that we sense in many of the things the Conservative government is doing. Free trade is one thing, but this is not free trade.
While I am on the subject of the Wheat Board in relation to the softwood lumber deal, let me tell the House what Terry Pugh, spokesman for the National Farmers' Union, said about this. He said that a dual market kills the CWB because its monopoly seller position is precisely what earns farmers premium prices in global markets. The empirical evidence is established to prove that.
We are acting in the best interests of someone else if we are advocating the dismantling of the Wheat Board. Let me tell members the effect this would have locally for my area of Manitoba. The Canadian Wheat Board's demise would affect not just farmers but would also have a ripple effect across the Canadian economy, closing the Port of Churchill in my home province of Manitoba and probably seriously impacting Thunder Bay and even the Ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, we can predict.
Do we know why? Because Canadian grain would go south and be mixed with American grain and shipped through American ports. Canadian wheat as a distinct commodity would disappear even though it is valued around the world as the best in the world. For pasta and other products, it is the highest calibre. It is the standard that other people use to measure their wheat.
John Morriss, editor and publisher of the Farmers' Independent Weekly, says that a dual market is a chimera, a word I had to look up. He asks farmers to recall the voluntary Central Selling Agency run by the pools in the 1920s and the voluntary Canadian Wheat Board which began in 1935. Both had spectacular bankruptcies, likely the two biggest business failures in Canadian history.
The voluntary Canadian Wheat Board, a model of which is being advocated now by our current Minister of Agriculture, lost $62 million in 1938-39. We can imagine what that would be in dollars today. That model failed. That model was built for failure. That model cannot succeed.
The reason a dual market will not work is that if the open market is higher than the initial payment, the board gets few deliveries, and if the initial payment is higher than the market, it gets the deliveries but has to sell at a loss. If members cannot understand that, they have no business advocating the dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board, because that sums it up in a nutshell. Still, there is this zeal, this unreasonable ideological passion, for dismantling the Wheat Board.
I used an analogy earlier. It is commonly said that a beaver bites off its testicles when it is threatened. If that is true, the beaver is certainly an appropriate symbol, if not for Canada then for two successive Conservative governments, because when faced with ceaseless bullying and browbeating by the Americans, the Conservatives react by carving off pieces of Canada as a nation.
They carve off significant pieces and important pieces such as our sovereignty in regard to being able to unilaterally set our own independent forest policy without having to consult with Washington, D.C. and getting permission, and pieces such as having our own Canadian Wheat Board establish single desk selling for the best interests of Canadian farmers. The Conservatives either do not understand this or they understand it and are serving some master other than the best interests of the Canadian people.
