Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the action taken by the Minister of Labour. I want to make a couple of comments at this time about the impact this strike is having specifically on my riding of Prince George—Peace River.
As the minister has said, I think this action is incumbent upon a responsible government, hopefully with support from all parties, but failing that, at least, as you said, Mr. Speaker, during the discussion on the point of order about whether this is actually the correct procedure to be using in this circumstance, hopefully the majority of members in the House will act responsibly and support this motion.
I can tell members that in Prince George—Peace River in northern British Columbia this strike is already devastating for the local economy. I have had reports about the problems in getting fuel from the refineries, both propane and diesel, because it travels in tanker cars by rail.
There have been problems conveyed to me by farmers up there as far as grain shipments and a lack of cars to move the grain to market are concerned. They are worrying about the ongoing $300,000 a day in demurrage charges that the farmers themselves are going to have to pick up, because that comes out of the pooled returns under the Canadian Wheat Board. It is the farmers, who can least afford that type of additional cost, who are facing that cost already. It is adding up for them every day that this strike is allowed to continue.
I was very privileged to be at a recent mine opening in my riding for Western Canadian Coal. It is called the Wolverine mine and is just outside of Tumbler Ridge in my riding in northeastern British Columbia. I have information from that mine that it will be shutting down, potentially as early as tomorrow, because it does not have cars to ship its product out to Prince Rupert and on to our customers abroad.
We can see from that one little corner of our country the devastating impact that this strike is having on our local economies, on local jobs and, most importantly, on local Canadian families that are trying to make ends meet.
I fully support the initiative, but if only we could solve this today, it would be great. I still have hope, as we all do, that the two sides can negotiate a settlement. Perhaps they will have that in place before the day is out. That would be great. We had all hoped that it would have been settled long ago and we would not have had to take this action, but it is incumbent upon a responsible government and a responsible minister to act expeditiously when we are faced with this.
Also, I have not even gone into the whole subject of our international reputation as a reliable shipper of natural resources and other products. All of our customers rely on our international reputation for reliability. They rely upon it, and if we cannot show the world that Canada can be relied on to meet our commitments and keep our contractual agreements, it will be devastating to our economy.
I wanted to voice those concerns and ask the minister if he has any other direct evidence that he wishes to share with us about the devastating impact, if not today, then certainly in the hours and days to come, that would result from this strike were it to be allowed to continue much longer.
We cannot solve this today, even with this legislative procedure. It is potentially going to take up to another week to get this in place. It is not like we can just snap our fingers and solve this.