Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe

“Mr. Speaker, what a nice introduction. I will pick up on what my colleague just said. He supports anyone who supports Canada. The major issue with the tariff crisis is that the federal government keeps crowing about building Canada. However, looking at the proposals that the government put forward these past few weeks, it looks more like building Canada while ignoring Quebec. Which two sectors are the most impacted by the U.S. government’s tariffs? There is the aluminum sector, which is primarily based in Quebec. Then there is the forestry sector, which is subject to a mix of countervailing and anti-dumping duties on top of 10% tariffs, for a total of 45%. The forestry products we send across the border to the U.S. have their profit margins cut by 45%. No economic sector can withstand that. The entire forestry industry back home is in upheaval and going through incredibly tough times, and the government is not doing anything to help. I just wanted to mention that as a response to what my colleague said. What I want to highlight today is the double standard. I have been here since 2019. Whenever the auto sector or the energy sector—which the government generally equates with oil and gas—is in trouble, the government is there to help. The economic update includes investments in oil and gas. That is a normal thing for the government. When it comes to the more Quebec-centric sectors, however, the government is nowhere to be found. I am feeling generous, so I will split my time. I was getting a bit agitated, but I am calming down now. As I was saying, there is a double standard, and it is major. As I mentioned on Friday, just for fun, I looked through the economic update to demonstrate this double standard. To figure out the intentions behind a document, we can simply search for keywords. How many times do the words “forest” or “forestry” appear in the government’s economic update? I searched for both terms. They show up six times. How about the word “aluminum”? It shows up 12 times. Just for the heck of it and to satisfy the member for Repentigny, I looked up “climate change”; there are five occurrences. If we want to hit a home run, to use the federal government’s language, we need to talk about oil and gas. If we look up the word “gas” in the latest economic statement, we see that it appears 45 times. That is the federal government’s primary interest. The word “oil” shows up 153 times. That is what the federal government is interested in, as we have seen in recent weeks. It offers well-thought-out, deliberate strategies for the oil and gas sector, and it offers absolutely nothing for the forestry and aluminum sectors, which are facing the highest tariffs. I will quickly talk about forestry, because we submitted a proposal to the government. That was part of the discussions that the Bloc Québécois wanted to have with the government, discussions that did not take place when the economic statement was being prepared. Some people got together to talk about how to solve this problem of countervailing and anti-dumping duties. That is money that is being held at the border, and it has likely exceeded $13 billion to date. How can we get this $13 billion back and ensure that it is invested and that the operations and facilities of the forestry sector are maintained? We wondered why Export Development Canada would not play a leading role and make it possible to buy back a portion of the countervailing and anti-dumping duties at the end of each month. The government refused and ignored that. Do members know what I find shocking? The Standing Committee on Natural Resources invited EDC representatives as witnesses, and we spoke with them. Let us look at the double standard I am talking about. In 2022, EDC invested $9.3 billion in the oil and gas sector in tax benefits and incentives. Yes, just in that one sector. It is clear where the federal government’s major investments are going. In 2023, the amount was $7.3 billion. If a fraction of that was going to support the forestry sector, we would be over the moon. We would be very happy. However, the federal government has never suggested such a thing. For carbon capture and sequestration strategies alone, EDC handed out $102 million in 2023 and $464 million in 2022. Obviously, the federal government is focused on the energy sector. Forestry is definitely the part of the natural resources sector that gets the least attention. The member for Lac-Saint-Jean and I actually did a comprehensive study to figure out what the federal supports for the forestry sector amounted to. The economic benefits for the federal government coming from our region of Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean alone exceed the sum total of federal supports for the forestry sector. That is quite something. Why is that? It is because the federal government has always been afraid of standing up for softwood lumber. It is so shocking that even babies are screaming in the House. Some hon. members: Oh, oh! Mario Simard: I lost my train of thought. I am sorry. I was saying that my region is giving more to the federal government in terms of economic benefits that the sum total of supports it is getting for the forestry sector. Federal investments in the forestry sector go through EDC. The government has never stood up for that sector because primary processors are told that they need to go through Global Affairs Canada. Global Affairs Canada then says that no financial supports can be offered because that would be in violation of trade deals with the U.S. and our trade dispute with the U.S. regarding softwood lumber. Consequently, not a single primary processor of softwood lumber can receive any kind of support from the federal government. We took a closer look at this, because it seemed so unfair. For medium-sized businesses in the forestry sector, the primary market is Canada. The primary market is domestic; it is within Quebec. Even businesses that do not export anything to the U.S. cannot get any sort of financial support from the federal government. The federal government will soon be tabling a strategy for retooling the forestry sector so that it can get through the crisis and create more added value. That is what we hear, but in the past 20 years, the federal government has never given so much as a dime to the forestry sector. Now it is wondering why it is so hard to invest in infrastructure and why all the small communities in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean and the rest of Quebec that depend on forestry are losing their shirts. It is insane. Sawmills are consolidating. The pulp and paper sector is ailing. Meanwhile, the tariff crisis is going on, but there is no federal government support in any form. Last August, the federal government allocated funding to the forestry sector. Seven or eight months later, no one had yet seen a penny of that money. The program parameters had to be tightened to be able to fund certain forestry companies. I get the impression that the same thing is going to happen in the aluminum sector. Primary aluminum is doing relatively well, because the price is adjusted according to the U.S. Midwest premium. However, aluminum processors, based primarily in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, are in an impossible situation. They are currently paying off loans they took out in 2018, and now the government says it is going to allow them to take out new loans. Who can operate that way in an industrial sector, constantly taking out loans to cover the cost of tariffs because the government is not doing its job? What was announced may be a good start, but we will see how it plays out over time. What I personally hope is that the federal government stops investing Quebec’s share in fossil fuels and instead uses it to defend Quebec’s own interests. I hope that our colleagues from Quebec, both in the government and in the Conservative Party, will be ready to support us on this.”