Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for a couple of minutes of grace there. The House had some activity on Bill C-27, so I was just getting a quick briefing on that. Thank you for a couple of extra minutes to get here. I appreciate it.
I want to respond to something Mr. Jowhari said. He is actually a friend, so when he made that joke about not listening, other members should not be offended. He did that yesterday. It was related to a filibuster that I was doing at the time. The Liberals were trying to reduce my time at the industry committee, so I spoke for over two and a half hours, I think it was, on the bridge in Windsor.
Mr. Jowhari did actually listen when I'm not sure sometimes whether others did or not. It was a kind pun that he was making yesterday, not a negative thing in any respect. He's always reminded me that I've briefed him well on the border between Windsor and Detroit.
I do appreciate that, but he also asked about this issue affecting my riding, and this is one of the reasons for the motion as it is. It is important for me to clarify that, in many ways, it restricts my capability to do my job in terms of the interest that I have in the sector and also these investments, and I will say that there are investments. There are a lot of questions out there about the number of jobs that are going to be created. There are also a lot of questions about how they will play out in the community. The lack of planning that's been done is scary, quite frankly.
A lot of people at this table will understand the shortage of housing across Canada that we now have to deal with, and there has been very little federal or provincial support provided to the municipality or the citizens as to where some of these workers will come from and whether they are going to be permanent or temporary or maybe cycled in and out. There has been engagement with the private sector to some degree, and there have been city resources spent for that, but it's one thing that's going to create angst and anxiety and it is something we need to get out there in public to continue to make sure the numbers are correct for proper social planning.
Maybe with these opportunities, if we are going to have to live with any possible contracts in whatever way they are going to be written, there will also be a way of making sure that, when these housing elements are done and the workers are gone, the housing can maybe be turned into social housing. There is work that can be done in that vein, which is important to maybe cover some of the concerns that are being expressed about the amount of capital investment that's taking place and the fact that we are going to have to have some workers come in regardless, because the contracts are signed.
These are some of the reasons why I think shedding light on this issue is tremendously important. I also want to have confidence that proper training is going to be provided. We've had all this time between then and now to work on getting more training done, and we haven't seen that take place. However, perhaps with more light on this there can be training opportunities for the future, whether they are for the plant in Windsor, which is coming online first, or perhaps for some of the other communities, which might send some of their members to our area temporarily or have some of the Windsor members go to different places to actually contribute and lessen the burden on foreign workers and their necessity in the future.
We don't have any of those things in place right now, and we don't know the answers to those important questions. That's one of the reasons I can't agree with the amendment.
I come from an auto family and I know that it is critically important that the jobs be worth it, but we still don't have a national auto strategy. That is something I have been after for a long time. We have one-off deals that leave us vulnerable to these situations, because we end up doing Hail Mary passes. For those who aren't familiar with the football jargon, this refers to the last play of the half or the quarter, in which you throw the ball as far as you can and hope that somebody catches it and you can win or tie the game. That's kind of our approach to some of these—