Mr. Speaker, last week, in what has become an all too common occurrence in the auto sector, DaimlerChrysler announced massive job cuts. These layoffs will affect thousands of workers and their families, further impacting an already devastated sector and community.
The Windsor region now has the highest unemployment rate of any major region in Canada and faces a very uncertain future.
Sadly, when we abandoned the auto pact we started to see jobs disappear. Now, for the first time in 18 years, Canada has an auto trade deficit and there is a real possibility that we could be on the verge of losing our auto sector.
Despite this possibility and the disappearance of more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs in both Ontario and Quebec in the last two years, there does not seem to be any sense of urgency on the part of the Conservative government.
Instead of pursuing free trade with such low cost countries as South Korea, the federal government should be negotiating sectoral trade deals.
I call on the government to live up to its rhetoric of action and do what the previous Liberal government failed to do: Implement an industrial strategy to address the problems facing the automotive sector.