Mr. Speaker, I will begin by quoting a couple of witnesses who came before the committee because they were referenced here when I was in the House today. I, like the hon. member, was at the committee when they were there.
In reply to a question about his belief as to whether this was a sellout of the shipbuilding industry and should it be a carve out, one witness, Mr. Andrew McArthur, said:
If it's not a sellout, it's getting close to it. It certainly doesn't enhance the survivability of the industry. It jeopardizes it. It would be pretty hard to say it's an absolute sellout, although it's getting close.
That was said by an industry representative who talks about his multiple years in the industry. In fact, the gentleman has had experience on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, originally being from my homeland of Scotland and knowinf the shipbuilding industry there as well. He goes on to say:
It's not only EFTA that concerns us. The ground rules may be set.
I repeat that, through EFTA, the ground rules could be set because we are negotiating with Singapore and South Korea. Once we set those ground rules, if we get the same with all these other countries, the industry could be in very tough conditions and could only survive on government contracts.
This side of the House and the other side of the House know what happened to those government contracts. I believe there was a sense that there would be two new supply ships built for the Canadian navy. I could ask my hon. colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore, if he were here, if he had seen those two supply ships in Halifax lately and I think the response would probably be no, since they have not been built. Part of the reason that they were not built was that the government said the bid was too expensive. That is from our yards. Of course the bid may have, in the government's estimation, been too expensive but it is because the shipyards are not producing at maximum level. By their own records, they are producing at about one-third capacity, which means they need to retrofit the yard to do a vessel of that size and they need to find workers. That multiplies the effect of what the cost will be when we bid the job because we will need to find those workers and, indeed, enhance the yard so that it can produce the product.
All those things contribute to the cost and the fact that the cost was so high. One could argue whether the cost was really that high when Canadian taxpayer money would be building Canadian ships, Canadian sailors would be on those ships and those ships would be made by Canadian workers in Canada who would be paying Canadian taxes to the Canadian government. The government would then be able to circulate that money back into the economy through other measures and other programs. More important, inside the community where those Canadian workers live, they would now be putting money back into the economy because they would be earning a wage and not be collecting employment insurance, which comes out of the fund and which could be used for other folks.
The multiplier effect is enormous. When we look at the cost of something and think that it is a little bit higher, a little bit higher than whose, begs the question. Is it Korea? Was that the government's intention? If Canadian yards are too expensive, it will send those Canadian vessels for the navy to Korea. Is part of the master plan to get EFTA in place and then simply negotiate the next shipbuilding contract with Korea? We will see what the industry and the workers representatives have told us at committee that the industry cannot survive.
Let us take a step back and see what is inside those yards. The people who work in those yards have very specific skills. Most of those skills are only adaptable to the yards that build those vessels. This is a highly-skilled workforce and building vessels is fairly labour intensive. An investment in a yard today produces jobs today as well, and, from those jobs, we produce apprenticeships, which is retraining.
I know the government is fond of talking about its action plan, about money for retraining and about money for jobs. This is the opportunity to take that rhetoric and simply write a cheque. The government should procure those vessels from Canadian yards, put those workers back to work and allow them to take on apprentices. Today the average age of a yardworker across the country is 53.
Albeit for someone such as me, who is just a little north of 53 years of age, to say that is getting on, by the same token, it does not take that much longer before those workers will retire. Without replacing those workers through an apprenticeship program, we will see the demise of the yard, because the labour component will disappear across this country. That would be a shame not only for those communities and those workers but for this country, which has the largest coastline in the world.
We really are a maritime nation, albeit some of us do not want to believe that from time to time. My own riding of Welland, of course, is named after the Welland Canal, bordered by two lakes and a river. It is split in half by the Welland Canal. It is hard for us to understand that we are a maritime nation when we live in the centre of Ontario, but indeed we are surrounded by water.
In my riding, from time to time we can actually watch the ships go across the bridge. It is really a tunnel for us but a bridge for the boats. For those who have never had the experience of heading down that tunnel and seeing a boat go across the top, it is the strangest feeling when it is experienced for the very first time.
To lose that ability to build those vessels in this country would be tantamount to criminal negligence.
We need to understand what the industry is saying to us. I would think my hon. colleagues on the other side of the House, who tend to be friends of that group, would understand that, and if they do not, certainly the Liberals would, because the Liberals were on this file before the Conservative government was.
What the industry has said from day one is that they need a viable industry in this country to build ships, and we need to help them establish that. They are willing to do their part. In fact, the industry and the workers in the marine units have done that. What they are saying to the government is, “Allow us to do what other nations around this world are doing, just like the Jones Act did for the U.S. Let us carve out shipbuilding. Let us have the same opportunities that Americans have and we will be able to compete.”
Not only that, but we would have the sense of security in this country that we are actually going to build naval vessels in Canada for Canadian sailors. It seems to me that is the very least we owe the women and men in our armed services, to understand that when they get on that vessel, it is Canadians who have produced it for them, it is Canadian quality that went into it, and it is Canadian security that provided it for them.
Not only that, but Canadian taxpayers are looking to us to spend their money wisely. They entrust us with their money and they expect us to spend it wisely. I have said this in my other career as a municipal councillor: There is no wiser decision we can make as people entrusted with their money than to spend it on them, to invest it in Canadians, who give it to us. Unwaveringly they say, “Here it is,” and they provide it to us.
It seems to me that what we really need to do is have a carve-out. We look at the tariff program and say we can build it over a number of years. The industry is saying that will not let it survive. The Norwegian industry, which is the one that really we are going to compete with here, is an industry that spent the last 20 years being subsidized by the Norwegian government, so indeed it could end up going to the marketplace. Why is it that we cannot do the same thing?
We are not asking for any more than that. Carve it out. Carve it out so that we have an opportunity to do the same things the Norwegians have done. It seems the fairest thing to do. If the Norwegians thought it was good enough for Norwegian citizens, the least the Canadian government can do is say it is good enough for Canadians.
Why should we be second-class world citizens when it comes to looking after ourselves? Why would we want to put an industry and our workers in jeopardy when indeed we do not have to do that?
We have this opportunity here, and I would look to my colleagues on this side of the House, especially the Liberals, and say to them that they should rethink their position on the carve-out. They should rethink the perspective of what they are doing, which is selling out shipyard workers from coast to coast to coast in this country and decimating an industry that has been here for hundreds of years.
The first folks got here by ship. Whether they happened to be the aboriginal nations or not, one can talk about a land bridge, but a lot of folks actually sailed to this country. To think that somehow we do not have that industry anymore, it make one want to weep, to be honest, especially someone such as myself who came here as a new Canadian with my parents.
My father came here to build ships. As a legacy to my father, because he has passed on now, the least I can do is stand in this House and say that I stood for shipbuilding in this country. That is what brought my family to this place and I will not let him down.
