I am Karl Risser, Marine Workers and Boilermakers Industrial Union Local No. 1, and the ITF inspector for Atlantic Canada.
I would like to start by saying the same as everybody else. We're in favour of fair trade, and we want good trade deals.
For a worker, collective bargaining draws some lines. In collective bargaining, there are good collective bargaining agreements and there are bad. This is a bad agreement. When we look at the past agreements under the Conservative watch, there were 500,000 manufacturing job losses in 10 years. These are the best jobs that we create, with nine or 10 spinoff jobs in the economy. These are the jobs that we need to protect. These are the jobs that people rely on. These are community jobs. These are the jobs that things are built around.
I love blueberries too, but for blueberries, they're bring in temporary foreign workers by the busload. We're talking about good jobs. We need to protect good jobs, and to do that, we need to plan.
There is Canada's shipbuilding procurement strategy, creating thousands of jobs in the area that needs it most in Halifax. That shipyard is booming. We have new technology and innovation. There are great things that are going on there. This deal will stop us from taking the next step.
We have a shipyard in Marystown that's empty. The workers are all laid off. We had 1,000 workers there. We want those guys working. Whoa, let's start creating a domestic fleet. Let's start working at the marine section. Let's start building ships. Let's start creating jobs in Newfoundland. Wow, we can do those things, but we can't do them under bad trade deals, so we need to protect that.
In closing I will say this: manufacturing matters, good jobs matter, and we rely on you guys to protect them. Eighty people control the same amount of wealth as 3.5 billion people. I think politicians should be like NASCAR drivers. You can guys can decide to put 80 names on your jacket or 3.5 billion names.