Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wish I were there in person, but my flight got cancelled last night due to fog from Vancouver Island. Thankfully, Dana Hawkes, the chief shop steward from B.C. Ferries, loaned me his tie so I could be here.
In all seriousness, we want transparency and we want to avoid future problems, which is why we're supporting this motion today.
I want to raise a few points as well. The government investment in the auto industry is a long-standing strategy in Canada, the U.S. and around the world. It has benefited the Canadian economy and has built the middle class in this country over many decades. The workers and the unions are the ones responsible for sustaining the industry and creating opportunities through decades of negotiations to get the industry to transform for the next technological change to electric vehicles. It's really a once-in-a-lifetime, multi-generational situation.
This government has had to meet the challenges the U.S. government created through the Inflation Reduction Act auto provisions. While doing so, they have fallen short on the disclosure and transparency that exists in the U.S. government's plan, which is why we're supporting this motion.
A national auto strategy—something the NDP has called for, for two decades—would have provided the transparency and accountability this government has decided to ignore. Over the past two weeks, from a revelation from the South Korean ambassador that 1,600 foreign workers from South Korea were coming to help build and operate a plant, there have been many questions that the government has refused to answer. Last Monday, the government said it was one job. Then on Tuesday, it was 100 jobs, and then on Thursday, it was 900 jobs, etc.
The confusion has damaged public trust and sowed division among the various unions and communities. This is a failure of leadership and it needs to be corrected. It's what we're working on today, hopefully. These investments in our auto sector are very important. They'll be transformative for the industry and create many new jobs for Canadians. Accordingly, this must have public support.
To do that, the public needs all the information on these investments and facilities across this country. This is an opportunity for the government to rebuild that public trust by demonstrating how these investments will create jobs for Canadians and new training opportunities, and employ our brightest engineers and scientists and world-leading skilled auto workers along with our highly skilled building trades professionals.
Full disclosure also means outlining how many foreign workers from countries such as South Korea, Sweden, Germany and other countries will be coming here, what jobs, paths and training they will be carrying out, and for how long. This will ensure the public has the full knowledge and understanding of the facts. Once the public has all the facts, they will support these investments and public trust will be rebuilt. That's the hope. That's what we want, ultimately.
I know that Canada’s Building Trades Unions is still concerned. During all the public announcements, ribbon cutting and victory laps, neither the federal Liberals or the provincial Conservatives identified that hundreds or thousands of workers would be coming. We just want to make sure that all references to building a battery plant, training and becoming experts are going to be done here.
There are a few important things. This gives us an opportunity to understand. It can be demonstrated that if we are short some skills—which we don't believe—starting with this first project, let's learn to train our workers, who are already used to travelling to different provinces to do that work. Every community right now is struggling with housing at the moment. Why are we not using this as an opportunity to plan and create permanent housing as well?
The real fight here is for the initial bill. Let's get it going.
We, the New Democrats, have confidence the public supports clean energy jobs, transitioning the economy and being competitive. Our difference is accountability through an auto policy, so people appreciate and support the value of our partnerships. These investments need to be for workers and their families, not CEOs or shareholders as the primary beneficiaries.
One concern I have that I wanted to highlight in the motion is that it's drawing the report to come back to the House. I don't believe that's necessary at this point. I think we could order the documents from our committee. We can do that without going to the House. Normally, it would just be reported to the House and then turned into an order from the House if a committee request is ignored or broken. I would like to amend anything that refers it to the House and move that direction to report it back to OGGO.
I would like to move that amendment to the motion, and hopefully I can gain support for that from my colleagues.