SoVote

Apr/8/24 6:39:52 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I really appreciate my colleague's question, but I think he has it wrong. This government has put a lot of effort into defending the forestry industry in co-operation with the Government of Quebec. At the same time, we are supporting the industry with many investments both in the industry and in communities.

56 words

Mr. Kyle Seeback (Dufferin—Caledon, CPC)

Apr/8/24 6:40:31 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am going to be sharing my time with the member for Prince Albert. What we have here with the softwood lumber dispute is—

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The Deputy Chair

Apr/8/24 6:40:43 p.m.
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Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to share his time? Some hon. members: Agreed.

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Mr. Kyle Seeback

Apr/8/24 6:40:51 p.m.
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Madam Chair, what we do is look at the softwood lumber dispute, but not in the vacuum of the dispute itself, because this is now an eight-year dispute. Within 79 days of Prime Minister Harper being elected in 2006, the softwood lumber dispute was resolved, and we had lumber peace for nine years. That agreement expired, and then the current incompetent government took over. We are now eight years down the road, and $10 billion in duties have been collected and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost. If we actually look at the bankruptcies in the forestry sector, since 2016, 183 companies have gone bankrupt in the forestry sector as a result of countervailing and anti-dumping duties and as a result of the complete failure of the Liberal government and the Prime Minister to resolve this. The consequences just continue. In 2024, at the Terrace Bay pulp mill, 400 jobs were lost. At West Fraser, in February 2024, 175 jobs were lost. In 2023, at the Canfor Prince George pulp and paper mill, 300 jobs were lost. These jobs are continuously being lost because of the absolute mismanagement of this issue. If members do not believe me that this issue has been mismanaged, all they have to do is look at the trade committee's report on this and the recommendation in that report, with which five Liberal members agreed. Five Liberal members actually agreed with the statement that “an agreement with the United States regarding...softwood lumber...ultimately will occur only through direct head-of-government negotiation.” That is the recommendation from the committee, which included five Liberals. The fact that there has not been a resolution is because there has been a complete failure at the head-of-state level. This falls squarely at the feet of the Prime Minister. It is his job and his duty to resolve the dispute. He has failed miserably, and the Liberals keep coming back with these old bromides, like the “team Canada approach”. It has been eight years. Their so-called “team Canada approach” has produced absolutely no results. In fact, it is getting worse, because the government has so badly mismanaged the trading relationship with the United States that we are just not as relevant as we once were. We are now the United States' third-largest trading partner, as a result of the incompetence of the Liberal government, and that has consequences, because we are not as important a trading partner of the United States as we once were. The Liberals keep saying that trade is up. Trade is not up with the United States. Trade is up by price because of inflation, but the volume of trade with the United States is down. Again, the only people responsible for this are the Prime Minister and the trade minister, who is not even here for the debate on softwood lumber—

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The Deputy Chair

Apr/8/24 6:43:59 p.m.
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I am sorry. The hon. member knows full well he is not to indicate who is in the House and who is not in the House.

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Mr. Kyle Seeback

Apr/8/24 6:44:06 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-282

Madam Chair, the trade minister has not participated in this debate. It was not her who led off debate for the government. It shows us how important this issue actually is for the government, that the trade minister does not lead off debate on a simmering eight-year softwood lumber dispute. It is worse than this. We have declined as the United States' trading partner, but we also have continuous own goals in the trading relationship. We have to look at things like Bill C-282, the supply management bill. That did not win us any friends in the United States, and now the Liberals are saying they are going to unilaterally impose a digital services tax, which the United States is adamantly against. We have declined as a trading partner because of the incompetence of the government to manage the trading relationship. The Liberals bring in all of these trade irritants, and they wonder why they cannot resolve this dispute. It all goes back to the incompetence of the government, the incompetence of the Prime Minister and the incompetence of the trade minister. They are the people who are responsible for this, no one else. The buck stops with them. I would love to see the Prime Minister come and contribute to this debate. I would love to see the trade minister come and contribute to this debate, but I suspect I will not, because it is actually not important for them to do so. That is what is causing all of the job losses we are seeing. We have gone from 33% market share down to 26%, and that is old data. That is actually from 2022. It is probably worse. We are probably down to 24%. This is haemorrhaging jobs in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec and the Maritimes, and the government's response is to not have the minister lead off debate and to talk about its team Canada approach. It is not doing anything. It will not do anything. Even the Liberals on the trade committee know it will only be resolved by Prime Minister-to-President negotiation. Unfortunately, we are snookered, because our leader has nothing to offer on this.

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Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)

Apr/8/24 6:46:09 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I do not want just keeping putting my hands up and saying that the government cannot figure it out and that we should walk away. I do believe in a team Canada approach, but the government has not truly done that. I think about members like my colleague who just spoke, and other colleagues in the House who are impacted, as their constituents and workers are impacted by the softwood lumber agreement. They have never corralled us all together and said for us to get organized, to head to Washington, to get into the regional branches of the Canada-U.S. Parliamentary association like PNWER in the Pacific Northwest region and to get out to meet with those state governors and state legislatures. They have not done that. There has not been a full-court press. Does my colleague agree with me that there needs to be a full-court press, not just Prime Minister to president, and that it needs to be now? Some people in the U.S., on that side of the border, do not understand the ramifications of what they are doing to their own people, never mind to Canadians.

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Lumber

Mr. Kyle Seeback

Apr/8/24 6:47:09 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the team Canada approach is one part of that, which should take place. The Liberals are failing miserably on that because they are not getting that groundswell of support in the United States to bring that pressure upward. The real issue is that, ultimately, the American president has to force the United States softwood lumber industry into an agreement because it has legal rights to continue to pursue action. Those rights have to be negotiated away. That is what happened when we had lumber peace under former Prime Minister Harper. The only way to do that is to get the president involved. The President of the United States will not get involved in this dispute because the Prime Minister has bungled the relationship so badly and our trading relationship has declined so precipitously that he could not be bothered. The only way to fix it would be to change the leader at the top. Thank goodness, when there is a carbon tax election, we will fix it. We will get the softwood lumber dispute resolved quickly; mark my words.

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Mrs. Brenda Shanahan (Châteauguay—Lacolle, Lib.)

Apr/8/24 6:48:13 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I listened to the speech of the hon. colleague with great interest. Regarding the international tribunals, I would like to hear his comments about how the international trade dispute mechanism works or does not work.

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Mr. Kyle Seeback

Apr/8/24 6:48:34 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the Liberals keep coming back to the possibility that they maybe might win a dispute here or a dispute there, and that would resolve the issue because it has resolved it in the past. What the member does not know is that the United States used to group these disputes together. If one was won, it would say that it would resolve all of them. However, it is not doing that now. It is saying that it does not care if we won the dispute from 2019, because we are then going to have to litigate the disputes from 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. It is ragging the puck. It is not interested in resolving the disputes. We can get these little victories, but they will not matter because of the mismanagement of the relationship by the Liberal government. The only way we will resolve this, more than ever, is with some real leadership. Unfortunately for Canadians and for the softwood lumber sector, we have no leadership in the Prime Minister, the missing trade minister or the Liberal government.

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Mr. Mario Simard (Jonquière, BQ)

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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Mr. Kyle Seeback

Apr/8/24 6:50:18 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I fundamentally disagree. We had a good deal that returned almost all of the countervailing and anti-dumping duties to the softwood lumber industry. It was able to use that money to innovate. In addition, we secured market access in the United States and had lumber peace for nine years. That is a great deal. It is a deal that the Bloc Québécois will never sign because it will never be government. We have to get the Prime Minister, or a new one, who will come soon, to find ways to repair the relationship with the United States. The only way we are going to resolve this dispute is if there is political will to do it. To get that political will, we have to repair the relationship.

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Mr. Randy Hoback (Prince Albert, CPC)

Apr/8/24 6:51:03 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I rise today to speak to the softwood lumber dispute between the United States and Canada, and the over $8 billion in tariffs that the Americans have collected from Canadian businesses. As adviser to the leader of the official opposition on Canada-U.S. relations, I wish to give my unique perspective on what I have learned in Washington and on the challenges that the Liberal government has created in reaching a negotiated deal. This situation is one of the Prime Minister's own doing, and it is reflective of his lack of care for the forestry sector as a whole and for the thousands of Canadians who are impacted. There has been $8 billion in tariffs collected as a direct result of the Liberal government's failure to prioritize Canadian workers, indigenous communities and our natural resource sector. It did not need to be like that. There is a desire on both sides of the border to resolve this matter, as Americans and Canadians recognize the importance of the industry. There is no excuse for not reaching a negotiated deal. Over the last 42 years, Canada and the United States have reached agreements on softwood lumber. The most recent agreement, softwood lumber agreement five, was in place from 2006 to 2016. SLA 5 was in place because the former Conservative government understood the importance of the forestry sector to Canada. We understood that the forestry sector was mutually beneficial to both Canada and the United States. When we went to Washington, we made sure that we worked collaboratively with our American partners to reach an agreement. The Liberal government has done the exact opposite. It has completely ignored the situation and has refused to address the dispute at the highest levels of government. When the agreement expired in 2016, the Liberal government should have made it a priority to negotiate a resolution with the Americans, but instead, it delayed and looked the other way. As the years passed, the hon. ministers of international trade blamed the American government, claiming there was no desire to resolve the dispute in Washington. I wish to contest that point. Over the years, American legislators, associations and companies have publicly made it quite clear that they want the softwood lumber dispute resolved, and for good reasons. The United States does not produce enough lumber for its own needs. In a letter dated May 17, 2021, addressed to the United States Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, over 90 members of both parties in the House of Representatives urged the U.S. federal government to resolve the matter with the Government of Canada, saying, “We now call upon you to represent American interests on this critical issue by pursuing a balanced agreement with Canada. We, as Members of Congress, stand ready to discuss this issue and potential solutions with you.” Additionally, on May 12, 2021, members of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations wrote to the Secretary of Commerce and USTR Tai, saying, “We write to urge you to take action to resolve the longstanding trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada on softwood lumber” and also saying, “These imports are vital to support the ongoing housing boom”. It has not been American denial. It has been the Liberal government's refusal to acknowledge the issue at the highest levels of government and to advocate effectively for a solution to the softwood dispute. Most interestingly is that the Standing Committee on International Trade published a report in November 2023 analyzing the problem and the possible remedies. During those hearings, Government of Canada officials noted that the Minister of International Trade raised the issue of the current dispute directly with President Biden. She raised the issue. According to officials at Global Affairs Canada, the Prime Minister also emphasized the harm of American tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber producers and employees, yet in the report, recommendation 4 states, “achieving an agreement with the United States regarding trade in softwood lumber products ultimately will occur only through direct head-of-government negotiation”, and it also says, “the...softwood lumber dispute should be made a high-level priority in dealings with the U.S.” They had the President of the United States in Ottawa last March, yet again, the Liberal government failed to advocate for Canadian jobs and Canadian interests adequately. This report, the timeline and the situation we currently find ourselves in demonstrate that the Prime Minister has routinely failed to resolve the dispute and has failed to make the interests of Canadian workers a priority when dealing with the United States. The previous Conservative government successfully negotiated a deal, yet the Prime Minister has failed to provide the attention this dispute so desperately requires over the last five years. Why has he continued to fail to negotiate a deal if these Canadian jobs are so important to the Prime Minister? Why does the Liberal Government not give the issue the attention it desperately needs? The softwood lumber dispute will not resolve itself overnight. It requires actual leadership to get it done. We, as Conservatives, know that we can get it done. We also know that the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost.

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Mrs. Brenda Shanahan (Châteauguay—Lacolle, Lib.)

Apr/8/24 6:55:58 p.m.
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Madam Chair, there were a couple of things in his speech. This is something that is not going to happen overnight, but indeed, it has been a long-standing dispute for a number of reasons. However, Canada has won in the arena of the neutral international trade dispute organizations. I would like to hear his comments about that, and also hear why Conservatives voted against supports, time and time again, that our government put forward for the softwood lumber industry.

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/8/24 6:56:42 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I give the member credit for being here tonight. I appreciate her being here and showing interest in the industry, even though it is not in her riding. Twice in the current Liberal government's history, it came close to negotiating a deal. Both times, it required the Prime Minister to step up and get it across the finish line. He had a chance in 2021, and he did not do it. He had a chance in 2017, when it was down to disputes over the amount of wood over quota and lack of supply in the U.S. that Canada could fulfill. Ambassador MacNaughton almost got it done. If the Prime Minister had paid attention, it probably would have been done. That is the problem. When it was done in 2006, President Bush, Jr., and Prime Minister Harper sat in a room, negotiated and got it done, president to prime minister, prime minister to president. In reality, it does not matter what one does for the team Canada approach with regard to this file; it comes back to those two people having the political will to do it. The Prime Minister has not shown that political will.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

Apr/8/24 6:57:46 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I thank my colleague, a fellow member of the Standing Committee on International Trade in the last Parliament. I think we were both on the committee together in this Parliament, and I believe he was there when I moved the softwood lumber motion he just quoted. We have even been on one or two missions to Washington together. We advocate for this issue there a lot. Financial support for oil is in the billions of dollars; for forestry, it is in the millions of dollars, and most of that is in the form of loans. Does my colleague agree that there is a bit of an imbalance here?

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/8/24 6:58:26 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I appreciate the fact that the member took the initiative to show up in Washington and to work on behalf of all Canadians, including those from Quebec. In fact, the forestry workers in Quebec should be the most upset with regard to this file. They made the changes to their system to meet the requirements that the U.S. set, yet the government has not been able to take the sacrifices and the changes they made in Quebec and to sell it across the line. What happened? They still pay a tariff. It still comes back to president to prime minister and prime minister to president. If the Prime Minister does not know what he is talking about, if he does not have the political will or does not have the initiative to support Quebec forestry workers, I will guarantee one thing: prime minister Poilievre would.

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The Deputy Chair

Apr/8/24 6:59:08 p.m.
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The hon. member knows he is not to name individuals. The hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni.

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Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)

Apr/8/24 6:59:19 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the Conservatives keep going back to when they were in power. They gave away a billion dollars U.S. of collected funds, which legitimately belonged to Canadian softwood lumber producers, and about half of that amount went to the U.S. lobby group that started the whole thing. In the agreement, they sent half a billion dollars to those lobbyists. Does my colleague think that was a good deal? Is that what Conservatives want to bring back? Conservatives taxed our producers with that deal, and I have not heard them come forward with a proposal that is not going to revert back to their failed deal when it was Prime Minister Harper or Prime Minister Mulroney. That is 42 years of failure. They cannot absolve themselves of it.

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/8/24 7:00:17 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the reality is we had 10 years of bankability in the forestry sector under the Harper government. Right now, there is $8 billion tied up with the U.S. government. A lot of that belongs to first nations. That money could have been used in first nations. The Prime Minister has not shown up. Does he care? He does not care. I am trying to get that point across to people here in Canada. If we had a Prime Minister who actually cared, this deal could have been done in 2016 or 2017. He does not care. The reality is that Canadians pay for it. The Prime Minister is not worth the cost.

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SoVote

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