Mr. Speaker, earlier this week families in my community were greeted with the all too familiar news of more job layoffs.
When GM informed its employees that the Windsor transmission facility will be closed, it was yet another piece of bad news in what has been a string of dreadful announcements from the auto industry.
We have lost 140,000 manufacturing jobs in Ontario in the last four years. In my community of Windsor, thousands of auto sector jobs have simply disappeared. These statistics, while staggering, fail to adequately illustrate the countless individual stories behind each job loss.
The government casually, indifferently, talks about significant restructuring or sectoral adjustment. That is not what it is about. It is about a very negative personal impact on the lives of thousands of men, women and children in my community. It is the families in my community and other communities throughout Ontario and Canada who have to cope with these negative consequences.
Once again I urge the government to implement an industrial strategy to address the problems facing the automotive sector, and in so doing, help make a positive difference in the lives which are now being simply restructured.