There are numerous examples across the country of the steel industry's demise. We see it in Atlantic Canada. We've seen some of those places disappear. It has devastated those communities. These are engine drivers.
I was in Saskatchewan where Ipsco is now Evraz, a Russian company. With the amount of revenue that brings, if that company were to leave, it would be a tremendous situation. I've seen the devastation that it's created in Sault Ste. Marie. I worry about the Soo at night because of the fact that this is one of the largest industries. If it were to disappear, it would really have a significant effect.
You just mentioned Hamilton. Hamilton was kind of seen as the Chicago area of Canada with regard to all the steel mills around. It's going to have a tremendous effect. I can't express the disappointment enough. We've been at the front of the fight in regard to the bankruptcy laws, to make sure that workers have some access to their pensions and have the benefits. I know I get emotional sometimes, because it is emotional to have all these people, 20,000 people....
I worked in an industry. It wasn't the healthiest industry when I first started. It's much more modernized today. Those people knew when they were working in those industries that it was also a health risk. The union said that we were going to have some benefits post-retirement. That's now disappearing. When do we need health care the most? The fact is that it's in our senior years when we need medication. These people are now being deprived. In many cases, we're going to send them to their graves earlier than they should be going because they don't have that facility.
That's heart-wrenching. I don't care whether you're a labour leader, the mayor of the city, a businessman, or a CEO. You should be concerned about that. It is devastation.
We've adjusted. We've lived up. We've done the skills training in regard to the upside and downside through CSTEC. There was the innovation of the government of the day, where we had the tri-part of labour, business, and government. It worked great. We were able to deal with that. We were able to train people and to put them into industries where jobs were available, because they were no longer in the steel industry. That has now somewhat disappeared. We've narrowed it down to 22,000 steelworkers. We almost had that many in the Hamilton region alone. It's devastating. The fact is that it doesn't have to be that way.
If you don't have a vibrant steel economy, that is a black strike, a black mark against the country. We need to do everything we can to preserve it, and to make sure that we have dumping protection, because as you've heard from all the submissions, a market economy, that's just not going to work.