Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government has sold out the Canadian softwood industry with this deal. We are voting down the deal because it is a bad deal.
From the start we said that free trade agreements would not work. I remember the long discussions in the mid-1980s. We said that NAFTA would be problematic. At that time we were told to have faith, the trade agreement would work and that Canadian companies would definitely benefit from the deal.
What has happened subsequently is that in my area of Trinity—Spadina, a great number of garment factories have closed their doors. A large number of immigrant women lost their jobs and their livelihoods because of the free trade agreement. In the mid-1980s there was a lot of discussion. We put forward many arguments about what would happen to some of the industries. We were told that there would be some losers and some winners and that we would see the results.
In Trinity—Spadina thousands and thousands of jobs were gone and a lot of factories and entire areas were emptied out. Fortunately, we were able to bring in other industries, software and many others, to help rebuild that whole area. Definitely, the garment industry in downtown Toronto has been almost entirely eliminated. I think the same is true in parts of Montreal. On top of that, right now in the garment industry there are home workers, people who take work into their homes and get very, very low pay. All of this is because of free trade.
At that time we also said that the free trade agreement would not necessarily work because of chapter 11 as big companies could sue different levels of government.
A few years ago the small town of Hudson, Quebec decided to ban pesticides. Some companies said that was not fair, and under the free trade agreement and under chapter 11, the town of Hudson was sued, but thanks to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and many others, the town won at the end of the day. As a result, different municipalities are now able to ban pesticides if they wish to do so.
We were told that the industry would benefit, but look at what is happening. In the softwood deal the whole dispute settlement mechanism will be thrown out. We were told to rely on the courts, that the courts would protect us. Actually they will not any more. This agreement is destroying the NAFTA dispute settlement mechanism by agreeing to give hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bush administration and the U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports. The message is clear. We will pay the Americans to bully us. The Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports is the main opponent of the Canadian softwood lumber industry. We are rewarding the coalition with hard-earned Canadian cash for harassing Canada, for harassing Canadian companies, for harassing Canadian workers.
I want to quote what is being said about it. One of the columnists in the Toronto Star said that thanks to this deal, we can stop pretending we have a free trade agreement with the U.S. and move on. That is what this deal is all about.
In the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, which by the way is in an area where a large number of jobs are going to be gone or are gone already, it said:
How much longer is Canada going to let itself be kicked around by a handful of powerful U.S. senators doing the bidding of their lumber baron constituents to ignore NAFTA's repeated rulings against them? How much longer is George W. Bush going to condone this betrayal of America's best friend? And how much longer is Stephen Harper going to stand for it?
We found that the Prime Minister said not that long ago in 2005, I know I should not have read out his name. I apologize.