44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 8, 2024 11:00AM
- Apr/8/24 2:56:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while the federal government spends its time interfering in Quebec's jurisdictions, the situation in its own jurisdictions is getting serious. The Prime Minister is in shock after finally discovering that immigration levels have exceeded our integration capacity.
Who was oblivious enough to have increased permanent and temporary immigration without thinking about housing, schools or health? Who was irresponsible enough to have branded everyone who talked about integration capacity a xenophobe? If only we knew. Who knows, it could well be the same person causing the debt to skyrocket. Does the Prime Minister know who this reckless person might be?
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- Apr/8/24 2:57:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since the Prime Minister is responsible for the largest population increase since 1957, many are likening him to a pyromaniac firefighter in the housing crisis. It is true that he is setting fires, but is he really trying to put them out? Is he lowering permanent immigration targets? No, he is not.
Is he spreading out the intake of asylum seekers among the provinces, to give Quebec some relief? No, he is not.
Is he reducing temporary immigration? No, he wants to increase it to two million, the highest level in history other than in 2023-24.
Now that he recognizes the problem with integration capacity, will he fix it?
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- Apr/8/24 6:38:57 p.m.
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Madam Chair, my colleague talked about a team Canada approach. The problem with that is that the federal government does not listen to the province that is paying the most in terms of U.S. softwood lumber tariffs.
Quebec accounts for 20% of Canada's softwood lumber exports to the United States, but it pays 48% of the tariffs. The federal government never wanted to lead the softwood lumber fight. Its main strategy in the dispute with the Americans was to protect the automotive industry to ensure that Canada can sell electric vehicles to the United States and benefit from the same tax credits. The federal government has never wanted to lead the fight. That is symptomatic of the problem that we have. We do not have enough leverage. Not one Liberal member is capable of defending Quebec's forestry industry.
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- Apr/8/24 6:49:38 p.m.
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Madam Chair, my colleague is bragging about the agreement that Mr. Harper negotiated, but I would just like to point out to him that people in the forestry sector lost $1 billion at the time. A billion dollars in ransom money was left on the table, so it was not exactly the best deal.
I have a fairly simple question for him. Given that disputes with the United States are ongoing, would he agree that a mechanism is needed that would at least give people in the forestry sector access to liquidity, since significant portions of their earnings are being left in the hands of foreign governments?
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- Apr/8/24 7:34:21 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am not entirely familiar with the reality of the forestry sector in British Columbia. I am more familiar with the situation in Quebec, but there is one fundamental issue, and that is processing. We need to process more wood. Unfortunately, we do not have the support of the federal government.
One simple measure would be to use the carbon footprint of federal government buildings as a criterion for awarding contracts. Unfortunately, the government does not want to implement this simple measure, which would allow us to use more wood in federal buildings. I wonder if my colleague agrees with that.
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- Apr/8/24 7:47:00 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, there is a fairly simple solution to support forestry companies. It was actually people in the forestry sector who came up with this solution. They have to be given access to liquidity. To get through the current crisis, with its tariffs that are totally unfair, what people in the forestry sector are telling us is that they need access to liquidity so they can invest in their infrastructure.
Would my colleague agree that a federal program is needed to give forestry companies access to liquidity?
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- Apr/8/24 8:06:23 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, does my colleague not find it odd that at no time in the minister's mandate letter, when it talks about trade disputes, is there any mention of the words “softwood lumber”?
Is that not a clear admission that the Government of Canada does not care about the softwood lumber dispute and that it is trying to use the regions of Canada that live from the forestry sector as a bargaining chip to secure the automobile sector with U.S. partners?
Does my colleague interpret the absence of the words “softwood lumber” in the minister's mandate letter as clear evidence of what I just described?
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- Apr/8/24 8:12:20 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou.
Usually, the best thing a person can do is to tell the truth. Let us tell the truth this evening. The government has never been willing to provide real support for the forestry industry. That is rather easy to prove. My colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot did so earlier when he said that the words “softwood lumber” do not appear anywhere in the Minister of International Trade's mandate letter. That shows how much this government cares about the forestry industry.
Meanwhile, the forestry industry is currently facing a perfect storm. If we look at everything the forestry industry is dealing with, we see that this economic sector that supports our regions is in jeopardy. This evening we are talking about punitive tariffs. If nothing is done and if the minister does not grow a backbone by then, these tariffs may increase from 8% to almost 14% in August. The federal government's financial support for the forestry industry is pathetic. I will come back to that later. It is absolutely nothing. It is peanuts compared to the support being given to another natural resources industry, the oil industry. It is downright appalling.
Our forestry sector has been going through major transformations over the past 15 years because the pulp and paper industry is gradually disappearing. We need to replace it with something else, but, unfortunately, we never get the financial support we need to make that happen. We also have a crisis caused by the woodland caribou, especially in Quebec, with the Minister of Environment threatening to enforce an order under the Species at Risk Act that would scuttle the efforts of many communities in Quebec that depend on the forestry sector. Then there was last summer's forest fire crisis.
All these factors add up to a perfect storm for the forestry sector. I think the only person who does not see that is the Prime Minister. Quebec MPs do not see it either. I rarely hear Conservative Quebec MPs talk about forestry. It is not just rare, it is practically unheard of. I have never seen them show any interest in the forestry sector, even when we studied it at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources. I am sure that Quebec is, by far, the biggest player in Canada's forestry sector. In 2000, the sector accounted for 95,000 jobs in Quebec. By 2010, that number had fallen to 64,000. The latest figures show 59,000 jobs in 2020. Why the decline? It is because the federal government refuses to support the forestry industry.
I would like to give members a very simple example. In the forest sector, no support is ever provided by Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions or any federal government program for primary processing. Why is that? Whenever primary processing is involved, people are automatically told to go through Global Affairs Canada to request federal government support and, de facto, the request will be refused. Let us try to name another sector of economic activity unable to obtain any federal government support. They are few and far between. However, this is what happens. The federal government does not want to address this issue.
For small and medium-sized lumber mills that produce roughly 300,000 cubic metres a year, the main customers are local, in other words, in Quebec or Canada. Even if they do not do business with the United States, they are paying a heavy price for the trade dispute we are in, because they cannot get federal government support. The government bragged about planting two billion trees. Does anyone know why the government is having trouble sending those trees to the forestry people who could plant them? It is because there is a fear that they will be harvested. If those trees are harvested, the federal government says that would violate its trade agreements with the United States. That is fear for fear's sake. They are essentially saying that since those trees might be harvested in 70 years, we might as well not plant them. That shows how much courage the federal government has.
In closing, I would say that this is a sad spectacle, one that has been going on for more than 20 years. There has never been any real willingness on the part of the Liberals or the Conservatives to support the forestry sector.
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- Apr/8/24 8:18:04 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, indeed, a billion dollars stayed on the table in the last softwood lumber agreement.
Now there are solutions that the current government could put in place. The majority of the key players in the forestry sector are asking us for a liquidity program. That has never been brought in by the government. The majority of people in the forestry sector are asking us to diversify. What they want is the opportunity to benefit from federal support either through BDC or CED, as all other sectors of economic activity have. The government has never wanted to offer this type of support to the forestry sector because it is too afraid of losing its cash cow. This would run counter to the trade agreements that benefit the automobile sector, the automobile sector being the federal government's cash cow. We are a bargaining chip and that is unfortunate.
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- Apr/8/24 8:19:55 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, the major problem is the laissez-faire attitude that the government has had on this issue for over 20 years. The federal government has never had a strong, clear desire to support the forestry industry, even though it claims that the forestry industry is one of the most promising industries in the fight against climate change.
When we harvest a tree in the forest, we have just sequestered and captured carbon. The more we build from wood, the more carbon we sequester and capture and the better our record on greenhouse gas emissions becomes. However, there has never been a Conservative or Liberal government that has been willing to include the use of wood in its tendering in a binding way.
An NDP member introduced a bill to that effect, but it is not binding, so what does it really accomplish in the end? It is little more than a petition or wishful thinking. We need to use lumber more, but we are not giving ourselves the tools to do so. We are not giving ourselves the tools to help the forestry industry with measures that are actually very simple. We are doing even less when it comes to helping the forestry industry with economic levers. Those do not exist in Canada. The only explanation I can think of is that perhaps it is because Quebec is the biggest player in the forestry industry and because no one has enough power in their party to exert the influence necessary to change things.
The solution is fairly simple. We need to become independent. If we were a country, we could do it ourselves.
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- Apr/8/24 8:22:20 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, absolutely, there are plenty of opportunities. There are also success stories. One example is Chantiers Chibougamau, which will provide the beams and infrastructure for all the buildings at the Paris Olympic Games. These examples exist, but unfortunately, the main problem is that the entire forestry processing sector cannot get any support from the federal government, even though this sector could have a considerable influence on our greenhouse gas emissions.
I would simply point out that $2.5 billion has been invested in carbon capture and storage strategies. Now the big companies are pulling out of these projects because, ultimately, they are doomed to fail. That is where our money is going.
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- Apr/8/24 8:52:46 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I agree with my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable. The current government is not doing much to support the forestry sector. Even worse is that no government has ever done much to help the forestry sector. Under the last agreement that was negotiated by the federal government, $1 billion was left on the table.
To me, the future does not look bright, because if there were to be a Conservative government, I am not sure anyone in it would be interested in the forestry industry. Never in my life have I seen a single member of the Quebec caucus of the Conservative Party show up at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources and try to advance the issue of wood. I have never seen them there. I have never heard them there. I live in a forestry region. I have never seen them take part in any activity about caribou, tariffs or the forestry sector's urgent request for support. If the past is any indication, I fear that the same thing will happen under a Conservative government. I hope that my colleague can reassure me on this.
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