Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be very brief.
When I look at this situation where we're trying to encourage foreign investment into the Canadian economy, I reflect back on a situation that I was directly involved in, the global enterprise at Celestica. There was an opportunity there for us to compete with a number of other municipalities and jurisdictions.
We were successful. We created hundreds of jobs in our small community, and we were able to do that on the basis of collaboration. We engaged the federal, the provincial, the regional and the municipal authorities to work together to let Celestica know that it was important for us to have the jobs that their investment would create for our community.
Those jobs were important in terms of creating additional employment for our community, but one of the things that I keep hearing now is that these jobs are going to foreign workers. Well, the foreign workers pay rent and they buy groceries. They support retail industries, and that money is being spent locally. I think we sometimes find it all too easy to overlook those things.
What's disappointing for me is the tone in which all of this happens. How does this portray Canada? Does it portray Canada as a country that welcomes investment, wants to collaborate and work with people, as opposed to kicking around every project like a football and vilifying the investments? If I were an investor, I certainly wouldn't be interested in dealing with those kinds of circumstances.
I think we should overlook this oppositional method and start putting before us the importance that this has to our country, to the jobs that it creates for Windsor and to the secondary jobs that it supports in that area.
I would hope that we would develop an attitude of welcoming, an attitude of collaboration, an attitude of working together, so that Canada not only becomes that but strengthens its profile as a place to invest.