Stephen Harper

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, maybe the Prime Minister should go to actual crime statistics rather than the mayor of Toronto.

In any case, on another matter, it is clear that the problem in Kashechewan starts with the incompetence of the Minister of Indian Affairs. This minister goes to the reserve, refuses to drink the water or sleep there and returns to Ottawa, knows all about the problems, and does nothing about them for weeks on end.

This has been one of the saddest and most disgraceful performances by a minister in the history of this House. Will the Prime Minister step up, do the right thing and finally ask for the resignation of this minister?

[Justice, October 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I take that to be the Prime Minister's weaseling out of his commitment to make it totally available to everybody at the same time.

Let me go to a second question. When the United States Secretary of State was here, the Prime Minister claimed that 50% of gun crimes in Canada are committed with weapons smuggled from the United States, but the RCMP and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police say that this number is unsubstantiated. In fact, PMO officials apparently have admitted that the figure was just grabbed out of thin air.

Will the Prime Minister admit that he invents gun crime statistics for the same reason he invents meetings with victims' families? His government has been totally unable to control gun crime in this country.

[Sponsorship Program, October 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister made a solemn promise to be completely transparent about the sponsorship scandal.

What is more, Susan Murray, a government spokesperson, promised that the Gomery report would be available as soon as the government got a copy.

Will the Prime Minister keep his promise and give a copy of the report to the three opposition leaders as soon as he gets his copy?

[Justice, October 26th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, a decision was made to oppose this by Pierre Trudeau 30 years ago. It is surprising that the government cannot maintain this decision but it is typical of the Prime Minister to show leadership by passing the issue to somebody else.

I have a third example, the Meyerthorpe tragedy. Yesterday the Prime Minister sat with the families, as I did. I am sure the families explained to him that in this case, had there been mandatory minimum prison sentences for this repeat offender this tragedy would never have occurred.

Does this fact cause the Prime Minister to rethink his government's opposition to mandatory prison sentences?

[The Environment, October 26th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it was the Premier of Ontario who said that he was missing in action.

The second example is the dangerous American LNG tanker traffic through Head Harbour, New Brunswick. The Prime Minister has maintained that he will not take a position until the paperwork has been filed. Well, the paperwork has been filed.

Will the Prime Minister do what Canadian prime ministers have done for 30 years and stand against American LNG tanker traffic in our internal waters at Head Harbour, New Brunswick?

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 26th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister continues to fail to show leadership on issue after issue. The first example is the Kashechewan Reserve in northern Ontario.

Because of the neglect by the government, 1,000 people require immediate medical attention from contaminated water and now the Government of Ontario has had to step in and evacuate people because of the government's incompetence.

Why, when the Prime Minister claims that aboriginal issues are his top priority, does even the Liberal Premier of Ontario say that he is missing in action in this crisis?

[Softwood Lumber, October 25th, 2005]

Madam Chair, we have suggested a series of measures to assist our industry, community and workers and we discussed them tonight. We discussed the possibility of retaliation, although that is not my preferred option, but there are a whole series of retaliatory measures that my party and its supporters have outlined would be possible and, of course, reach out.

I do not subscribe to the notion that having a high level dialogue with the President is no action. The NDP clearly could not do that because the NDP never believed in NAFTA in the first place. NAFTA is not dead. I know the NDP would like it to be dead but it is not. I will say that the NDP has suggested one action. The NDP has suggested that we begin to place tariffs and taxes on our own exports to the United States.

I have heard some crazy ideas from the Liberals but in a trade dispute, where our own products are being penalized, we do not turn around and start penalizing other of our own products. Only the New Democratic Party would suggest that.

[Softwood Lumber, October 25th, 2005]

Madam Chair, first, let me comment on the rising volumes of our exports of lumber to the United States. No doubt this does reflect the competiveness of the Canadian product and the quality of that product. It also reflects something else. We need to point out to our American friends that it also reflects the failure of the entire approach to the countervailing and the anti-dumping duties.

These duties have forced Canadian mills to actually increase production to lower unit costs in order to pay the duties. To the extent that what the American industry wants which is to protect itself from Canadian imports, its strategy has actually had precisely the opposite effect. That is why the President and Congress should abandon it.

What do we do to advance this? What can we do in a concrete sense? We do not do what the member hinted at and what other members of the Liberal Party have hinted at. We do not hint at threats about not sending energy or other commodities to the United States. What we do is we point out the common interests we have in resolving this dispute and the common interests we have in getting our trading relationship back on track.

When this dispute reached the present stage, the present impasse, the Prime Minister should have called the President right away to make all of these points and to point out that the interests not only of the lumber industry but of the entire trading relationship were at stake.

I believe that because the Prime Minister and the President cannot speak at great length about this, they should have at least agreed on the fact that our relationship was important and it was being jeopardized. They should have agreed to appoint special envoys to continue their direct dialogue between them in order to understand the importance of the relationship and to seek a way whereby the United States could comply with its legal obligation and we could in fact strengthen the dispute settlement process to avoid these kinds of impasses in the future.

This is an approach that was used by, if I dare say, Prime Minister Mulroney on the acid rain problem which was previously considered to be an unresolvable impasse. The United States simply did not understand and had no interest in that issue. However, by having that kind of relationship and that kind of dialogue at the highest level, I believe we could make progress on softwood lumber.

The difficulty I think all Canadians have, when they look at the poison path of the relationship between this President in particular and the Liberal government, is that the relationship is simply not there to positively move this forward without sinking right back into the kinds of negotiations that we want to avoid.

[Softwood Lumber, October 25th, 2005]

Madam Chair, we do in fact support this proposal. As a matter of fact, the opposition leaders gave a press conference on that very subject three years ago. However, to date, the government has chosen not to act. Clearly, an election is nigh, since the government is now talking about an action plan. We will see.

The member for the Bloc Québécois asked me the question. I appreciate his party's support for such an idea, which is important for the industry and this country. In this case, since we are engaging in a major battle with a country as large and as important as the United States, it is essential for Canadians to work together and present a united front.

I know that the Bloc Québécois is working for Quebec's sovereignty and separation. Nevertheless, I must say that the Bloc Québécois' plan is not in the interest of Quebeckers in this regard. At such times, we need to present a united front, to be united as a country, in order to truly protect our best interests with regard to the United States.

[Softwood Lumber, October 25th, 2005]

Madam Chair, I begin the debate today by noting that we have been honoured to have the presence of Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State of the United States in Canada this week. However, while Secretary Rice's visit is welcome, it has highlighted the fact that Canada and the U.S. are facing one of the most serious trade disputes in the history of our bilateral relationship, and that of course is the dispute over softwood lumber.

This dispute is about a very significant industry. The lumber industry generated some $33 billion toward our trade surplus in 2002 and employs about 360,000 Canadians in over 350 communities in literally every single province and region of this country. But it is more important than that. From Canada's perspective, this is a critical moment in the future of our bilateral relationship because it deals with the willingness of the United States government, particularly Congress, to accept binding multilateral or bilateral trade decisions.

In case after case, before GATT, the WTO, and NAFTA, it has been found in the end that Canada is not illegally subsidizing its forestry industry and that will be found again. Yet, despite our strong legal case and repeated decisions in our favour, the Americans continue to collect duties, now close to $5 billion, in countervailing and anti-dumping duties from Canadian mills.

Most recently, the NAFTA extraordinary challenges panel ruled that there was no basis for these duties, but the United States has so far refused to accept the outcome and has asked Canada to negotiate a further settlement. Let me repeat what I have said before, and let me be as clear as I can. This is not a time for negotiation. It is a time for compliance.

The NAFTA panel process is supposed to be binding. It is supposed to trump domestic American politics. The danger of a failure to uphold this decision goes far beyond the impact it will have in towns dependent on the lumber industry whether they are in British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick or anywhere else.

Quebeckers, especially, overwhelmingly supported free trade in 1984, and it has proved very profitable to Quebec and all regions of this country. The time to negotiate the free trade agreement has passed; it is time to enforce it.

If the U.S. industry is able to pressure the government not to return duties when it has lost its last NAFTA appeal, it will not matter if most other trade is dispute free. If the rules are simply ignored, then the very basis of a rules-based system is threatened and the future of all Canada-U.S. trading relations could be profoundly affected.

I have to address how the government has handled this latest development. Over the past two months we have seen no less than three phases in its response. First, it has been complacent. This follows five years of this dispute and five years without a plan. I will remind the minister who is here tonight and remind the House that after the extraordinary challenge decision was rendered, this trade minister ran out to the media and insisted on our willingness to negotiate. That was the wrong message. Then, on top of that, for week after week the Prime Minister sat on his hands and did not call the President of the United States to express our concerns on this issue.

Second, the Liberals entered a second phase which was the anti-American hard line, not just critical of the United States actions on this decision, not just criticizing the United States in a speech in the United States, but a brutally, gratuitously critical speech of the United States and its entire system of government by our Canadian Ambassador to the United States. Then on top of that, sending the part time revenue minister, who I will refrain from impersonating tonight, over to play the so-called China card, as if we had suddenly discovered that China now exists.

Third, we have now entered the third phase of the Liberal Party's reaction which is the in-between reaction that the deputy leader of my party just referred to, waffling, dithering, looking for signs, and sending mixed messages. Messages such as: we will not negotiate, but we might negotiate; we want to negotiate; we will never negotiate unless we get our money, but we may negotiate even if we do not get our money.

These are the kinds of mixed signals we have had in the last 48 hours and at the very time when we did not need it when the Secretary of State was here. Now that the Secretary of State has left, we are back to the hard line message tonight and the slogan “respect NAFTA”. It all comes down to this slogan “respect NAFTA”.

Americans and Canadians will recall that the Liberal Party was the one who opposed free trade and NAFTA; that the Liberal Party was the one who committed to pulling the plug on them; and that, after Mr. Mulroney signed this historic agreement, the Liberal Party was the one who committed to tearing it up, against the best interests of Canadians and Quebeckers.

The Liberal Party now talks about respecting NAFTA, but it is all about credibility. We are at an impasse with a big customer and it is all about credibility.

What credibility does the Liberal Party have when it opposed NAFTA and wanted to rip it up? What credibility does the Liberal Party have when it shifts strategies on a daily basis and blows goodwill at the United States on issues that do not matter, making ill-considered comments and criticisms and decisions?

What the industry needs now, of course, is a plan; a plan to help after five years. No more time can be lost in developing a plan. Help must be given to our forestry industry and communities to fight this ongoing battle.

For years this party, and I need to say the other parties with who we often disagree, the New Democratic Party, including the Bloc Québécois, all of us have been demanding help for the industry, for communities, and for workers. We have asked the federal government to assist companies with their legal fees, with loan guarantees to cover the costs of illegally collected duty and, of course, particularly in British Columbia, to fight the pine beetle epidemic before it devastates the industry on a national basis.

All of these initiatives are long overdue and the time for action is now. We need to move quickly and decisively to help our softwood industry.

Now is not the time for more anti-American bluster because the Americans see through it. Now is not the time for inaction, for dithering or delay, nor is it a time to play a game of winks and nudges, and looking for signs. Now is the time to be clear and to stand up firmly for this country.

Now is the time, quite frankly, as soon as we can, in my view, to ask the people of Canada to put in office a government that will take a different approach to our relationship with the United States. I have said on many occasions that this country needs to understand not only its own interests but the interests we have in our shared relationship. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans when we can, so that we can sit eyeball to eyeball with them when we must at a time like this.

The government has shown over the past 12 years the capability of doing neither. We can do better and Canada can do better.