The member is right. They sunk it. That minister came to my riding in Saint John, New Brunswick and held a meeting with the men and women who worked at the shipyard. He told them he would be the saviour of the shipbuilding industry. The late hon. Pierre Elliott Trudeau knew there had to be a shipbuilding policy for the navy and he put money into the shipyard in Saint John. The hon. Brian Mulroney knew there had to be a shipbuilding policy for the navy and put more money into it, as well as the shipyard in Quebec.
We split those contracts between Quebec and New Brunswick. Where are the shipyards today? The shipyard in Quebec has gone into bankruptcy. Our shipyard in Saint John has a lock and bolt on the gate. We had about 4,000 men working at our shipyard in Saint John alone. When we take Quebec and all the companies that have supplied all the resources, parts and things that are needed, we are talking about 100,000 people in Canada who are no longer working, feeding their families, clothing their children and educating them.
This is the most serious situation I have seen in Canada in the last 15 to 20 years. I am truly upset about it because it hurts.
I just came from a meeting with representatives of the chamber of commerce of the Atlantic region. They asked me what is happening at the borders and said that something had to be done. They are asking for perimeter clearance. They want continental security but they have to have clearance.
Of corporation exports, 80% cross the New Brunswick border at Woodstock, Calais and St. Stephen. We have been told that the government will have pilot projects at borders, but once again we are not included. Why do people not understand that the people back east play a major role in the economy of the country? Those men and women who work there do a fantastic job. We have exports that cross that border, such as lumber and seafood. Farmers in the maritime provinces bring their food across the border to those people who want it. We do not get everything from the U.S. The U.S. gets things from us as well.
We have to have some kind of a project whereby we are treated fairly. All we have ever asked for is to be treated fairly. We are saying that the government should create a binational or trinational border management agency that would jointly monitor the entry of goods and people into and out of the North American continent and across the Canada-U.S. border.
As well, the port police have been taken out of all our ports. Those port police took seven courses to become port police and they all did a fabulous job. We did not have the problems of illegal immigrants coming into the country either out west or down east when the port police were there. It is unbelievable the amount of drugs coming into the country and there are no port police to look after that.
There are so many areas that need to be addressed, but if the military issues are not addressed in this budget, the government will never be able to face the public of Canada. If the security issues are not addressed in the budget next week, there is no way the Minister of Finance will sleep nights because those men and women, who put their lives on the line for all of us, their relatives and everyone, will be after the government, and rightfully so.
I and my party will be there to support those men and women in uniform. We certainly will fight for them and we will never stop until they are given the tools to do their jobs.