Mr. Speaker, I am now starting to understand the Conservatives a little better. When it suits them, they act immediately. This is often a matter of ideology. They act immediately and they have no hesitation about spending billions of dollars for defence, for hiring new police officers, for law enforcement, and so on. But when it does not suit them, they talk about studies and they talk about refocusing the motion and the program.
You do not have to be an Einstein to understand what was there before the older worker adjustment program was abolished in 1997. The very simple idea was to provide assistance for workers who were 55 or over, to provide them with a bit of a hand up, particularly when they had been hit by a massive layoff, a plant closing, often in one-industry regions. Spouses lost their jobs at the same time. The couple then had to liquidate all their assets, everything they had managed to put away over 30 or 35 years of working for the same company.
That program cost $60 million a year. Today I heard that the government had incurred an $800 million penalty for fast-tracking its purchase of military aircraft to meet American security requirements. That represents eight years of assistance for older workers. It costs $100 million a year. That means that with the amount of that penalty, the government could give 57-year-old workers dignity for eight years, until their retirement. They would not be forced to sell everything.
Is $100 million a year too much to ask when the government has just invested billions and billions of dollars in military weapons? It is shameful to try and refocus a motion when couples are struggling and are asking us to act quickly to help them.