SoVote

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Dec/1/21 7:33:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we knew that the Biden government was sending clear messages of protectionism, and we know that the softwood lumber issue is continually affected by the American trade lobbyists in Washington. The Prime Minister's team went to Washington on November 17, and this was to be the big rapprochement. Seven days later, we got hammered with an 18% tariff duty. My question is this: Were there discussions in Washington about the softwood issue? What was said, and why was it that within seven days of meeting the Canadian delegation the U.S. hit us with the hardest penalties they have thrown at us? What went wrong in Washington?

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Dec/1/21 8:02:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the one thing we know about the Americans is that they fight for their workers. Joe Biden went to COP26. He talked about a trillion dollar investment in a clean energy economy that was going to be tied to good union jobs. I have never heard our Prime Minister say that. Our Prime Minister went to COP26 and he announced an emissions cap. The people I know in the sector understand an emissions cap is coming. The world is expecting it but we got no details, no plan, no talk about a financial investment for the 140,000 energy workers who are getting ready for a transformation that is coming. Why is it that we have never heard our Prime Minister stand up and say that the plan for creating a clean energy economy will be tied to major investments, major opportunities and the good union jobs that Joe Biden is promising?

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Dec/1/21 8:17:48 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, the softwood lumber dispute is having huge repercussions for forest communities in northern Ontario. However, it has also led to the transformation of the industry, especially in terms of efficiency and the use of natural resources in the north. My question is as follows. Where is the federal government's plan to work with the forestry industry and the northern regions? How does it plan on developing new markets to harness the transformation of the industry and create new opportunities for it in Canada?

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Dec/1/21 8:24:29 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I would like to congratulate you on your appointment. I have heard great things about your wisdom, and I look forward to working with you. I will be sharing my time with the member for Windsor West. This is my first speech since being re-elected, and I want to thank the people of Timmins—James Bay. It is very moving to me that, in the first speech I give, I am speaking about an issue that is impacting our communities. I am thinking of the incredible community of Elk Lake and the mill workers there. The EACOM mill in Timmins has been taken over by Interfor. They are people with an open-door policy and they welcome me to the mill. I have visited with the workers and seen the production lines. One of the things we learned from the long crisis with softwood lumber is that we lost so many mills in the north, along with the collapse of the paper industry: the loss of Smooth Rock Falls, the loss in Kirkland Lake and the huge loss of the Abitibi mill. However, the mills that survived became very efficient. Just this spring I was talking to representatives from EACOM, who said they were finally having a good year. They were finally starting to reinvest, and then they got hit with this. This is an issue that we have to address. I am not going to attack my good friends over on the Conservative side, but their sense of history is, I find, a little strange. Yes, Stephen Harper signed a softwood lumber agreement, but he came in and threw out every WTO win that we had. We had won at the WTO time and time again, but then the agreement was that we would take a billion dollars' worth of subsidies that our industry had to pay, which should have come back to us, and give $500 million to competitive mills in the United States. Do members not think those mills thought that was a great idea, and that as soon as the softwood lumber agreement ended, they thought they would hit up Canadian companies for more money? The fact that our industries had to subsidize American competition shows how wrong this is. That is the history of this. In six years, the current government has not negotiated the softwood agreement, and it has an effect. It has been a ticking time bomb. When the Biden administration came in, we knew it was going to take a hard line on job protection, and I do not hold that against it. I do not hold it against Joe Biden that he is standing up and saying he is going to fight for good union jobs. I have never heard the Prime Minister say that. I wish he would. What worries me about the Prime Minister is that he is like the last of the Davos free traders. He believes that he and the Deputy Prime Minister can go to Davos and talk about this great international order where all the trading partners make agreements, but that is not what is happening. Around the world, countries are defending their own financial interests, and we have been left out in the cold. We saw it with the inability of our country to make PPE when we were hit with the pandemic, and our inability to make sure our people were safe with no investments in vaccines. Well, Brian Mulroney sold off our vaccine capacity, but the Prime Minister was going to trust in the international market. The Americans were investing in massive amounts of medical research during the pandemic so they would never be in that situation again. We were hoping for the best, and that is what we have been hoping for with softwood. We are hoping for the best, that everything will work out. The Prime Minister and the Minister of International Trade went to Washington on November 17. This was going to be the big hug. The Prime Minister was going to do the schmooze charm. Seven days later, the Americans hammered us. What did the Prime Minister say that pissed them off so badly that within seven days, they doubled the tariffs on us? I am not sure the trade minister even mentioned softwood. We never heard any talk about it, but within seven days of their being there, we got hammered. We know how the Americans are going to operate. We know where they stand, and we know how they will bend to their lobbyists and their vested interests in Washington. That is not news to us. The question is what we are going to do to stand up for our industry, our workers, the union jobs we need to defend in forestry and the auto sector, and the massive transformation we need to make in the energy markets. We have not heard that from the Prime Minister. Now the Liberals are telling us it is complex. “Trust us. Trust us,” they say. The workers in Elk Lake, the workers in Timmins, the workers in Cochrane and the workers in Kapuskasing, in my region, are not going to trust. They want to see action.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Mr. Charlie Angus

Dec/1/21 8:30:43 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, we have to stand up and not be afraid to say that our industry, which took it on the chin year after year after year, is extremely efficient. Our workers do the best job possible and American consumers look for Canadian wood products because they know they are top-notch products, yet with all that on our side, we cannot get down to Washington and make that case. There is something wrong there. The impact is in our communities. People who go to work and feed their families by the work of their hands, whether they are in the mines, in forestry or in agriculture, need to know that their lives matter here, where the lobbyists and the insiders and the rich folk hang out. Their voices are rarely heard in the House, and we have to be their voice. It is a shame on us that we would allow these jobs to disappear because we do not have a Prime Minister who will stand up for the working class in this country. We have to do better and we have to fight for these jobs, and that will mean trade retaliation. It has to happen. We have to say there's a line in the sand and we will fight.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Mr. Charlie Angus

Dec/1/21 8:32:59 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I encourage my colleague to participate at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources. It is a significant opportunity to implement practical alternatives so that the government can give the natural resources sector the development help it needs and so that we can develop Canada's regional economy. There is a lot of potential in the forestry industry, and this potential has evolved thanks to the efficiency of the industry and the vision of workers across the country. The Government of Canada must implement an investment plan to help this economy develop.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Mr. Charlie Angus

Dec/1/21 8:35:01 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, we have to be looking at all our sectors at the federal level in terms of the climate crisis and the climate change opportunity. Certainly, the issues of cement are huge. With the ability to use forest products to transform and lower carbon impacts, Canada can be a leader, but we cannot be a leader if we do not have a government that is willing to come to the table. Industry is talking about it; workers are talking about it and people have a vision. What we do not have is a government that is willing to stand up and work with us to make these transformations that will save the planet.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Dec/1/21 9:25:51 p.m.
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Madam Chair, this has been very instructive. Tonight I got to meet the Liberal softwood caucus, with the representatives from downtown Toronto and suburban Toronto and suburban Ottawa. They told us they were going prevail. They told us to call all our relatives and friends in the United States to say how unfair this is. We know we are in really bad shape on a trade deal when the Liberal softwood caucus is telling us to call our relatives and friends in the United States to say we are being picked on. That is not going to restore the jobs in my region or protect the mills that I have across northern Ontario. What I do not see from the government is any real commitment to the working class in forestry communities in this country.

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