I want to follow up on the call to action, because when the Pamour mine went down and the Kerr-Addison gold mine, one of the richest mines in the country, was stripped of its assets and the pensioners were left with nothing, the pensioners believed that they had savings, but they were lied to, and then they found that they were at the back of the line.
When I hear people say how unfair it is that we move these people, who spent their lives and literally gave the health of their lives to the company, and that somehow we're going to affect business if we give them any priority.... What happened at Pamour happened 30 years ago. I would have thought that it would have changed, but then I look at Sears. Then we are told “Oh well, it's a bricks-and-mortar business and they can't compete”, blah, blah, blah. Sears was a damn good business. It was taken over by a hedge fund bandit, Eddie Lampert, who stripped it. Again, it was perfectly legal.
We had legislation brought in that was supposed to protect those Sears workers. What lessons have we learned? Did Bill C-97 do the job it was supposed to do, or are we just continually letting these bandits rob pension funds and strip assets out of good, valuable companies?