I am going to continue my comments about the Conservative Party's amendment. To me, it seems quite ironic that the Conservative Party today wants to allow the governments of Quebec and Manitoba the time to negotiate agreements with Air Canada when, for years, we have been asking, as loudly as we can, for the Air Canada Public Participation Act to be enforced.
First and foremost, it was the Conservatives who let this situation deteriorate after Aveos went bankrupt in 2012, by doing absolutely nothing about the issue. The party that has always claimed to be the party of law and order suddenly found that the need to enforce the law was no longer on its agenda.
The situation in which we find ourselves today demands actions and decisions that are much more robust than the amendment that the Conservative Party is putting before us. The amendment deals much more with the form and the timelines than with the substance.
My Conservative Party colleagues have just voted against the NDP's amendment that sought to obtain a guarantee of jobs in this country. From that, I conclude that the Conservative Party agrees with the principle of outsourcing and with the loss of those jobs in the name of the almighty competitiveness.
The Conservatives are trying to be sneaky: they seem to oppose the bill, while, all the time, they are in favour of its general approach, which is to legalize the job losses that happened a short time ago and that the Liberal Party committed to defend. The aerospace sector, the manufacturing sector is very important for a number of regions, including the greater Montreal region.
I fail to understand the Conservative Party's position in presenting an amendment that does not seem to want to deal with the crux of the problem, which is to require Air Canada to keep aircraft maintenance and overhaul jobs in our country.
In my opinion, the argument made by my Liberal Party colleagues about the changing situation does not hold water. They are trying to have us believe that the situation changed between 1988 and 2016. In fact, the situation we are talking about changed between 2012 and 2016, but has not changed to any significant degree in the last four years. In the NDP's opinion, the commitments made by the Liberal Party yesterday should still be kept today.
I have a hard time seeing how the Conservative Party can spring to the defence of the former Aveos and Air Canada workers, given that it abandoned them four years ago. The Conservative Party has done nothing to improve that situation since.