Forestry Motion Debate in the House

Opposition members are calling on the federal government to increase financial support given to the forest industry to levels given to the auto industry.

Thunder Bay-Rainy River M-P John Rafferty told the House yesterday the request makes sense.

"The forestry industry has not received support," said Rafferty. "The Government of Ontario has said quite frankly that forestry is a sunset industry in the province of Ontario. I dare say the government believes the same thing. That is most unfortunate because when we look at the statistics, it is quite surprising to see the contribution that forestry has made to the Canadian economy."

"For example, the total revenue from forestry is about $84 billion a year. The total revenue from the car industry just before its troubles was about $94 billion a year. The total exports are also in the tens of billions of dollars for both the automotive industry and the forestry industry."

"Forestry is about 3% of the total GDP contribution. The auto industry is also about 3%. In terms of direct jobs, there are more than twice as many jobs in the forestry industry, about 300,000, as opposed to the automotive industry, which is about 135,000 before its most recent troubles."

"Most telling, when we put the direct jobs and the indirect jobs together, we are looking at almost 900,000 direct and indirect jobs in the forestry industry, as opposed to about 440,000 direct and indirect jobs in the automotive industry. We could probably say that both of these industries in terms of dollars are somewhat comparable."

Rafferty had asked the motion also include a request to government to negotiate an end to the U-S black liquor subsidy, but it was not supported by other MP's.