Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.
It is a pleasure for me to take part in this debate. The Bloc Québécois will be supporting the motion of the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre. We feel that the government's attitude toward this motion and toward the report from the Standing Committee on Finance is totally incomprehensible.
Moreover, the speech by the member for Etobicoke North has not fully convinced me. In general terms, he is telling us that the committee adopted this report unanimously but that now the government is not obliged to apply it in its entirety. That is true, but the House could at least use it to encourage the government to act.
This position is all the more incomprehensible because the problem is unavoidable. We all know that, following on a decision made 10 years ago by the GATT and the WTO, on December 31, quotas will be disappearing and tariffs will start to decrease. This will pose a serious problem for our apparel industry and has already become a problem for the textile industry.
The report before us was a unanimous report. I was sitting on the Standing Committee on Finance at the time when it adopted this report, in April 2004. The Liberals voted in favour of the report, as did the New Democratic Party and the Conservative Party. This is even more incomprehensible, the problem is so impossible to ignore that, just this afternoon, the Subcommittee on International Trade, Trade Disputes and Investment will be looking into the issue.
We had the contribution of a committee that had been unable to table its report because an election had been called, which was a first step toward resolving a problem that cannot be ignored. Liberalization of trade will have, and indeed has already had, an impact in the textile and apparel industry.
The apparel sector is already benefiting from the effect of the decision, which we supported, to unilaterally eliminate tariffs on apparel from 40 of the world's poorest countries. This tariff reduction on apparel from less developed countries has had an impact. According to testimonies heard at the time at committee, in 2003, imports from countries like Bangladesh or Cambodia increased dramatically.
Nevertheless, I would like to come back to the substance of the issue. We support the motion put forward by the hon. member from the NDP, but we cannot understand the government's position. We have to look back at the recommendations made by the committee at the time. As hon. members will see, these recommendations make good common sense in the current situation. They are inadequate—and everyone will agree on that—because the problem is much deeper and more structural. They do however represent unavoidable steps in resolving the structural problems facing the textile and apparel industry.
The first recommendation was that the federal government immediately extend, for a further seven years, the duty-remission orders covering the apparel sector that are set to expire on December 31, 2004. What does this mean? The member for Berthier—Maskinongé and I had a chance to visit Empire Shirt, the oldest shirt maker in Canada. It has been making shirts for more than 100 years, and the situation became very clear to us. On the volumes that garment importers and manufacturers were importing in 1995, the federal government decided to remit the customs duties to them.
They, in turn, were able to invest that money to keep their plant competitive. As a result, the company that has been around for more than a hundred years still has a hundred or so employees. If it had not had access to these duty remissions, the company probably would have either closed or be on the brink of closure, and the removal of quotas on December 31 likely would have been a death sentence.
Nonetheless, thanks to these duty remissions, this company was able to invest, improve its technology and also make bids including some imported shirts and some made in Louiseville. As a result, it got contracts not only in Quebec, but throughout Canada and the United States. These contracts came from public companies, police forces, and retail or fast food chains.
The duty remissions were granted by the government in 1995. The whole list of remissions is included in the document. This company—like many companies, probably—adapted to the new rules of the game.
The question, then, is this: Why would the government let these duty remissions end on December 31, even though the tariffs are not disappearing? On December 31, the quotas for imported clothing from China, India and other places will fall, while the other less developed countries were already covered by the unilateral decision made several years ago. The tariffs will not disappear overnight.
Thus, my company, Empire Shirt in Louiseville, will continue to pay duties. Perhaps these duties will be reduced over three, five or seven years. I do not have the details; I will have them this afternoon when we meet departmental officials. Having paid these duties, such businesses can expect remission of duties for quantities on which the federal government has already granted them. If not, the businesses will not only have to face the challenge of the borders being opened in terms of quotas, but also will have to pay duty on imports of shirts or clothes, without any remission. At that point, of course, their competitiveness is in danger.
I have told the House about one case, but I am convinced that in the industry as a whole these duty remissions are one way to help companies face the new situation.
That was the first recommendation. I am convinced that we all now agree it is only common sense.
The second recommendation is:
That the federal government immediately end tariffs on inputs which are not produced domestically. Textile producers seeking continued tariff protection should be required to establish that they sell their products to Canadian apparel manufacturers.
I have an example of this. A textile product is manufactured in China and sold to a company in Bangladesh. The shirt or other garment manufactured in Bangladesh enters Canada without customs duties because such duties were unilaterally eliminated. As I mentioned, the Bloc Québécois agrees with this. On the other hand, what is incomprehensible is that a Canadian or Quebec manufacturer importing the same textile—the same cloth—from China, will pay the duties. Not only have we unilaterally agreed to drop customs tariffs on clothing coming from Bangladesh, but what is more, we penalize our Canadian and Quebec manufacturers making the same type of garment. It is hard to imagine someone being more masochistic than that. We have seen, though, that this is not the only area where masochism seems to be the rule.
This recommendation does not propose to completely liberalize the textile sector. On the contrary, it asks the federal government to immediately end tariffs on inputs which are not produced domestically, so as to give our producers a chance to compete with products that come from third world countries.
Again, we were in agreement with the unilateral abolition of these tariffs. We are simply asking that, in the case of textiles inputs not produced in Canada, the government immediately end tariffs, so as to give our producers a level playing field to allow them to compete with foreign products.
The third recommendation reads as follows:
That the federal government immediately undertake a study of temporary adaptation measures to enhance competitiveness, as well as the benefits and costs of eliminating tariffs on imports of fabric for use in the Canadian apparel sector, the types and quantities of products produced by the Canadian textile industry, and the practice of tariff differentiation on fabrics based on their end use. The results of this study should be tabled—
I agree with the former Chair of the Standing Committee on Finance that the two recommendations are a necessary but insufficient basis to solve the problem in our apparel and textile industry so that it can be competitive. What are proposed are adaptation measures.
There is currently a great deal of research and development going on in the apparel and textile industry, but these efforts are not recognized by the federal government the way they are in other industries, such as aerospace and automobile. In fact, this is just a matter of fairness.
