Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
This is a very important motion because Canadians deserve answers as to where their tax dollars are going. The Prime Minister decided to give $15 billion to a large multinational company to set up shop here in Canada. In essence, he made every single Canadian a shareholder in this project, in the case of Stellantis, to the tune of $1,000 per household. If you lump them all in together, that number goes up to about $3,000 per household.
We're going to hear arguments, I suspect, and we've seen them in the media over the last few days, from Liberals saying, “We can't divulge the details of the contract because of commercial sensitivities.” Well, shareholders can absolutely demand to see documents when their company does something. When CEOs make decisions, they are held accountable by their shareholders. In this case we, as members of Parliament, are the representatives of the shareholders of this country.
Having foreign replacement workers coming to Canada, thanks to taxpayer subsidies, is of interest not just to the workers in the area but also to every single Canadian family whose tax bill is underwriting this. Let's talk about workers in the area. We've heard from union representatives that there are qualified Canadians who can do this work. The Windsor area, in the case of Stellantis, is home to hundreds if not thousands of qualified Canadian workers who have worked in the auto sector, in some cases for their entire lives and in some cases for multiple generations.
The idea that there is no one in Canada who can fill these jobs is an insult to those hard-working men and women who have built those communities and worked in that industry for decades in some cases.
That is what this motion is all about. If this is such a good deal for Canadian taxpayers and such a good deal for Canadian workers, the government should want to make the details of the contract public. If they have a different story to tell as to the number of foreign workers who will be paid for out of this contract, let them come to committee. Let them explain it.
All we're asking for here is that famous prescription about sunlight being the best disinfectant. We want to bring the details of this contract out of the darkness and into the light. That is something this government has touted, as my colleague Mr. Perkins outlined.
Even though it seems as though the minister doesn't know what's in the contract, that didn't stop him from going around for weeks and months talking about its benefits. If that's the case, now that these reports are out there, it's incumbent upon us to scrutinize those and to determine whether or not this is as good a deal as the government pretended it would be.
Billions of dollars are going to multinational corporations to build a single plant in Canada. To then have those taxpayer dollars used to underwrite foreign replacement workers is very concerning. If this is the way the government is going to conduct itself in terms of an industrial strategy or a job creation strategy, then, absolutely, Canadians have a right to know.
I'm looking at the numbers for the Stellantis deal itself, and the reports indicate that up to 1,600 of these jobs will be filled by taxpayer-funded foreign replacement workers. That's out of 2,500 direct jobs from the plant. That's 1,600 out of 2,500. That's not a very good ratio if you're talking about the percentage of tax dollars going to create jobs for Canadians versus to create jobs for foreign replacement workers. That's a terrible ratio.
We need to get to the bottom of that for those reasons. It's our job to hold the government to account when it spends tax dollars. It's our job to scrutinize the details on behalf of the shareholders of this country, every single Canadian taxpayer, every single Canadian citizen. I do hope the Liberals will agree to this motion because all it concerns is getting the documents in front of this committee so we can do the job that Canadians sent us here to do, which is to defend their interests, defend their tax dollars and make sure they're getting the very best possible deal.