I see it as a major undercutting, and that's part of our concern. From the industry I come out of, what we call what the minister is talking about is “greasing the slip” for when we're doing a launch. It's to make things move a lot faster. Going faster in the same direction isn't addressing the problems we're having. It's a major undermining of our economy.
I couldn't help but think--and I apologize, I forget his name--that someone talked about the kind of Canada we want and where we're going; all of us here are descendants of temporary or foreign workers coming into this country.
What kind of country would we have today if we had the ability...? I thought about this, this morning, for some reason that came into my head. I tried to envision what Canada would look like today if they had had the transportation ability to bring our ancestors in and then when they had done the job they were brought for they sent them back. What kind of country would we have today? That's what I'm afraid we're missing here.
When I made the reference to the shipyards, that was a great strategy. A lot of those workers came in on a temporary basis. They came in on work visas, but they had the opportunity to apply to be landed immigrants, to become Canadians, and to bring their families over. Now they're growing our community. They have stayed here. That's what we need.
We've had a panel. We've had a session here. Our provincial government is trying to get a good immigration strategy going, because our demographics are very bad--partly, thank you, because of the oil sands, we have a huge problem with out-migration--and we have to find a way to nurture that. Undermining opportunities for displaced workers, for current workers, or even for people who want to become Canadians, and fast-tracking that process, is a scary thought.
I hope there's going to be a public debate on this. I really don't want to rub a sore issue, but the fact is that there are restrictions on talking about a piece of legislation that will cause such woes. I think it's why we're in this crisis today. We never had a debate on the big trade agreements since 1989, and we've lost jobs. We can't sit by and not have public debate on something so important to the future of our country.