Mr. Speaker, I am very familiar with this issue, but it is a bit troubling that a company, in which the federal government is a shareholder, did not take the necessary measures over time to ensure that its technology and production methods complied with current and future environmental regulations.
Surely there is a lesson in all this, also in terms of the union. Obviously, I am not familiar with the problem in Oakville, but when I was at the CSN, we told our unions to be extremely vigilant on the issue of technological investments so as to be on the cutting edge and not get caught in a situation where, for environmental or other reasons, a facility is forced to close or people claim that things are bad enough for it to close.
In the Oakville case, surely with the necessary technological and environmental investments, refining capacity could be maintained. Everyone knows that, when supply drops and demands remains constant, prices increase. This is a simple law of economics that everyone subscribes to. What bothers me is the Canada-wide decrease in supply.