Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the NDP, I am happy to join in the debate on Bill C-55.
What I understand from the speeches of my colleagues from Scarborough—Rouge River and Sherbrooke is that the NDP might be the only party standing in opposition to Bill C-55, the enabling legislation for the Canada-European free trade association agreement.
We in the NDP have some compelling reasons to oppose this legislation, most of which have been cited by the other opposition critics, and yet they still seem fit to support the bill even though they have raised very legitimate concerns about its shortcomings and potential hazards in the context of the shipbuilding industry in Canada, or what is left of it, and in agriculture.
As my colleague from the Bloc pointed out, the supply management of our agricultural products is important to our Canadian agricultural-industrial strategy and we do not want to do anything that will jeopardize, undermine or diminish, in any way, our commitment to supply management.
I point out to my colleague that this particular bill was criticized heavily by Mr. Terry Pugh, the executive director of the National Farmers Union, because he noticed that the provisions of the agreement concerning agriculture defer to the World Trade Organization's principles and mechanisms if there is arbitration or a disagreement.
We know the World Trade Organization's view on supply management and we do not trust its dispute mechanism when it comes to maintaining the strength and integrity of the Canadian supply management, be it the Canadian Wheat Board or supply management in various sectors in the province of Quebec. I would have thought that alone would be reason enough for my colleagues in the Bloc to oppose the adoption of this enabling legislation.
Until the shipbuilding provision was carved out and until the provision of using the WTO's dispute mechanism was pulled out, the NDP was not prepared to support this bill, and we maintain that principle today. We are not alone in that. Even though there are a few people who agree, apparently, in the House of Commons today in standing up for the Canadian shipbuilding industry and supply management, there are important third party validators in civil society who have made their opinions known at the committee and who spoke very well in defence of the NDP's stated position that we cannot support this legislation as it stands currently.
I will get into detailed specifics about the bill in a moment but I want to express my bewilderment over how it was that Canada abandoned and walked away from shipbuilding as a key industrial sector that we want to promote, support and maintain. What gang of chimpanzees decided that Canada should get out of shipbuilding? It seems to me that was the policy decision that was made.
I was the head of the Carpenters' Union in my home province of Manitoba and I know, from the history of my union, that in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s the Carpenters' Union had 30,000 members working in the Burrard Dry Dock shipyards alone in downtown Vancouver. Those were 30,000 good paying union jobs in my union alone. That does not include the marine workers, the boilermakers, the ironworkers or the other tradespeople who were involved in the fitting out and production of ships in British Columbia.
My colleague from Victoria has tried to defend what is left of the shipbuilding industry in her coastal city. We had a burgeoning shipbuilding industry in this country. We were at the leading edge. At the Burrard Dry Dock alone, where my colleagues in the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners worked, they were producing a ship a week for the convoy to support Great Britain during the second world war, the merchant marine supply ships. The Burrard Dry Dock was setting the industry standard in the massive production of a certain category of ships that today cannot be built in Canada. That was 60 years ago.
We were at the leading edge, but by somebody's design, by some convoluted pretzel logic, somebody in the policy and decision making area of the federal government decided that shipbuilding was not really an industry in which we wanted to specialize as a nation. Maybe that someone had a grandiose idea that we would go on to more high tech industries or into the knowledge industry sector.
That is all well and good, but we should not think for a minute that shipbuilding is some smokestack blue-collar industry that is obsolete. It is not. Anyone who has ever been to Norway, as I have, would know that in Oslo the slips and the shipyards that build some of the world's finest ships are in a state of the art, computerized, high tech facility. It is on a par with the technology associated with the Canadarm in the robotics and magnificence of the machinery.
I have been to Lévis in Quebec, where there has been a fabulous tradition of shipbuilding throughout the 1800s and 1900s right up to today. If that were prioritized and nurtured the way other industry sectors have been, Canada would be right up there with Norway, Korea and Japan as one of the leading shipbuilding countries in the world.
However, there was a policy decision made many years ago to abandon that sector. People said, “Our kids do not want to work on those dirty tradesmen types of jobs, so we will move on to other types of work”. That was a tragic mistake.
No one can claim ignorance on this, because they have been reminded time and time again that abandoning the shipbuilding sector was a mistake. This bill that we are debating today compounds that mistake. It adds insult to injury in terms of abandoning that important sector.
Yesterday we sat in the House and listened to the president of the Ukraine outline the many bold, courageous moves that his struggling, burgeoning and newly independent country is going through. One of the things he focused on in his speech is how proud Ukraine is of the inroads it is making in getting competitive in shipbuilding.
Ukraine will be surpassing Canada in shipbuilding capacity and capability, because its government, through what I would argue is bold leadership on this front at least, has targeted shipbuilding as one of the industry sectors that it intends to promote.
We have a lot more shoreline than the Ukraine. We have deep sea ports in three oceans, including the port at Churchill, Manitoba. Of all countries, Canada should be at the leading edge of the shipbuilding industry. We are being left in the dust.
Members have talked about phasing out the tariffs on shipbuilding in order to enable and facilitate trade with these countries in this free trade agreement. Some have said that Norway has phased out its subsidies and is willing to drop its tariffs and therefore it is a fair trade relationship with a comparable country with high wages, et cetera. I am willing to admit that it is a social democratic country with a high wage, high cost economy similar to Canada's. That is a level playing field.
However, where it is not a level playing field is that Norway's shipbuilding industry was very heavily subsidized right up until the year 2000, when shipbuilders could stand on their own two feet and they did not need that subsidy any longer. We cannot compare that with the industry in Canada, which has been starved and systematically dismantled and is a mere shadow of its former self.
I argue that our shipbuilding industry cannot stand in fair competition with an industry that was nurtured, developed and fed for many years by public subsidy until the year 2000 and now is a successful, burgeoning, contemporary industry sector. It is folly to not acknowledge the inequity in these two businesses in these two countries as an example.
I said at the outset that the NDP is not alone in its opposition to this particular free trade agreement. While it has few supporters in the House, it seems, and our arguments have not moved MPs of other parties off their positions to support our position, there are many important third parties in civil society who validate and support the NDP's position.
Let me mention one. It is perhaps no surprise that the president of the Shipyard General Workers' Federation of British Columbia, Mr. George MacPherson, says:
The Canadian shipbuilding industry is already operating at about one-third of its capacity. Canadian demand for ships over the next 15 years is estimated to be worth $9 billion in Canadian jobs. Under the FTAs with Norway, Iceland, and now planned with Korea and then Japan, these Canadian shipbuilding jobs are in serious jeopardy. In these terms, this government's plan is sheer folly and an outrage.
Les Holloway, the Atlantic Canadian director of the Canadian Auto Workers and an outspoken champion of the shipbuilding industry, has made representations many times at committees before Parliament and before the House of Commons and said to the international trade committee that it “should not recommend this Free Trade Agreement without first recommending that the federal government first address the issues facing the shipbuilding industry that would allow the industry to compete in a fair and equitable manner with” these new trading partners.
That in and of itself, I would have thought, should have motivated my colleagues from the Bloc to say that this bill in its current form is not acceptable until some of these very real concerns are addressed.
Andrew McArthur, from the Shipbuilding Association of Canada and the Irving Shipbuilding yards, said before the Standing Committee on International Trade on April 2:
--our position from day one has been that shipbuilding should be carved out of this trade agreement. We butted our heads against a brick wall for quite a number of years on that and we were told there is no carve-out. If the Americans, under the Jones Act, can carve out shipbuilding from NAFTA and other free trade agreements, as I believe the Americans are doing today with Korea, or have done, why can Canada not do the same?
That is a legitimate question. The Americans are better negotiators than we are. Their negotiating stance is from a position of strength. They have decided that they are going to protect their shipbuilding industry under the Jones act. Eleven separate times, the Americans have challenged the Canadian Wheat Board as being somehow an unfair trade subsidy or advantage. We have never challenged the Jones act even though it is protectionism pure and simple, in its purest form.
I remember going down to Washington to argue with American senators on trade related issues. One time, in fact, it was on Devils Lake. One senator put it very succinctly to me and Mr. Lloyd Axworthy, who was the minister of foreign affairs at the time. We were sitting around a table with that American senator, who looked us in the eye and said, “Son, if it ever comes down to what is good for you and what is good for us, we are going to do what is good for us. Thanks for coming”. Then he showed us the door.
That is the bargaining stance of the Americans. The bargaining stance of Canadians seems to be one of weakness. We are lucky to get out of the room with some dignity after what we leave on the table.
I am no stranger to negotiations. I have negotiated collective agreements for the better part of my adult life. I know that we do not always get everything we want at the bargaining table, but I also know that we do not fold when issues of key importance to us are still on the table and there are still steps to be taken.
I put it to the House that there are still options for Canada if we want to make a statement about the integrity and the strength of our shipbuilding industry.
Mr. McArthur from the Irving Shipbuilding company also said:
We have to do something to ensure shipbuilding continues. The easiest thing is to carve it out from EFTA...if you do one thing, convince your colleagues in government to extend the ship financing facility, make it available to Canadian owners in combination with the accelerated capital cost allowance, and you will have as vibrant an industry as exists.
The capital cost allowance is something with which we are all familiar, something that is touted when it comes to promoting and supporting other industry sectors.
Those are two simple key recommendations that would be a vote of confidence in our industry instead of cutting it adrift and abandoning it to other actors and other players in other countries.
I was surprised at some of the things my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River was saying. He said that we have to put in place these free trade agreements with no tariffs and barriers because we need to be able to compete with these countries of low wages and low costs that may be able to produce ships at a cheaper rate.
Korea is no longer considered a low wage, low cost country. Norway has a higher average industrial wage than Canada does. The people we have to worry about competing with are not, frankly, the low wage, low cost actors in this particular competitive environment.
Let us listen to what Karl Risser Jr., president, Halifax Local 1, Canadian Auto Workers Shipbuilding, Waterways and Marine Workers Council, said before the Standing Committee on International Trade. He said:
I am here on behalf of the workers in the marine sector of our union to express our opposition to this agreement. Canadian shipbuilders find themselves competing for work in domestic and international markets on far from a level [playing field]...Other governments, Norway for one, have supported their shipbuilding industries for years and have built them into [key] powers, while Canada has not. We have had little protection, and what little protection we have left is a 25% tariff on imported vessels into Canada, which is being washed away by government daily through agreements such as this and the exemptions being negotiated with companies.
Why are we giving this away? To what end? What greater power are we serving here? It boggles my mind. Mine is not a very scientific, professional or academic approach but a gut feeling that we are making a tragic mistake. I despair sometimes. Where are my kids going to work if Canada does not build anything any more, if everything is built somewhere else? Are we willing to abandon those key manufacturing sectors so lightly and so readily?
Karl Risser Jr. ends his comments by saying:
So this EFTA deal is a bad deal for Canada. I'd love to see someone answer the question, what is Canada going to get out of this agreement? I know we're going to destroy our shipbuilding industry, a multi-billion-dollar industry in Canada. It's on its last legs now and needs a real boost. We have that opportunity in front of us, but whether we take it or not is the question.
He closes by saying:
Again, the one question I have is, what is the benefit to Canada from this agreement? The last thing I would like to ask is, will this agreement be put before Parliament, as [the current Minister of Foreign Affairs] has said, for a full debate and vote?
I guess his question is answered. We are here for a full debate. We are not here in quite the context that we were told we would be when it came to free trade agreements and some of the points of concern that have been raised regarding the process, as we were told.
I do have some comments and notes to make on that subject. We are not entirely satisfied that free trade agreements are getting quite the vetting that was committed to us over the years. This debate today is still subject to the fact that the government “may” bring it before the House of Commons and “may” put it to a vote. I do not know at this stage what we can do to satisfy ourselves that the concerns of Canadians are being met in the context of at least the shipbuilding industry.
Second, with what time I have left, I would like to express again our concerns in the context of the integrity of supply management in this country, which is put in jeopardy by the dispute mechanism stipulated in this free trade agreement. If the government is going to subject disputes over supply management to the WTO, which we know is no friend of supply management, then the National Farmers Union and its counterparts in the province of Quebec would have serious concerns.
For those two reasons alone, we feel confident that we are doing the right thing in voicing our opposition to this bill. We are not opposed to free trade. We are not opposed to fair trade, especially with countries that are virtually our equals in terms of economies.
With social democratic countries such as Norway, I believe there should be a free movement of goods and services and products, but we should not trade away the farm. We do not have to be Jack and the Beanstalk here, where we trade the family cow for three beans, none of which may actually sprout. With that analogy, I will end my remarks.
