Mr. Speaker, I would like to use an urgent situation in my own riding to outline the impact of the CP Rail strike in many ridings both urban and rural across the country.
Kootenay West-Revelstoke has a pulp mill and a smelter both on the verge of complete shutdown because of the week old rail strike. This will take $2.6 million a week out of an area of less than 20,000 people. Not only is this financially devastating; it is totally unnecessary.
My question is for the Minister of Labour. How much economic pain and suffering has to be felt by innocent third parties, everyone from factory workers to prairie farmers, before the government takes its inevitable course of action?