Mr. Speaker, next Saturday, November 1, LAB Chrysotile, a limited partnership led by Jean Dupéré, will close the 110 year old BC asbestos mine in Black Lake.
Three hundred workers will lose their jobs; 82% of them are over 50 years old, and 36% are over 55. These 300 workers have an average of 27 years of experience at the mine.
This mine closure is catastrophic for the Thetford and Black Lake area and for the whole MRC. It must be understood that 300 layoffs in Thetford and Black Lake is the equivalent of 7,000 layoffs in Montreal.
Three weeks ago, the BC mine workers committee met with the assistant deputy minister of human resources development for the province of Quebec, André Gladu. On behalf of the Minister of Human Resources Development, he proposed three active measures to the committee, namely targeted wage subsidies, training courses and what was formerly known as self-employment assistance.
You have to admit, as I do, that these three measures are definitely not enough to help our workers. It is not realistic considering the age of these workers. It is not realistic also because of the current economic context in the asbestos industry.
The objective of the economic recovery committee, the objective of the federal member is to provide for, to plan an improved POWA, a program that the human resources development minister himself abolished on March 31, 1997. In May, for five weeks, the community of Thetford Mines saw no less that nine ministers and the Prime Minister. They did not really come to visit the region as tourists. They came very regularly, so often in fact that their limousine drivers became familiar with all the short cuts to the asbestos region.
It is strange; the human resources development minister has been as silent as the grave since we have needed him on the issue of asbestos. Consequently, I wish to inform him officially that on Wednesday, two days from now, about a hundred mine workers will be here, in the House. If the minister cannot go to Thetford, the Thetford workers will come to him. But it is still quite surprising that, during the election campaign, he found time on two different occasions to come and beg for their votes.
We are not asking for active measures for our mine workers, but for an acceptable preretirement package since—