Mr. Speaker, sadly, I rise today to follow up on a question I asked in the House before about our manufacturing sector.
Hamilton Speciality Bar is a plant in Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. As it sounds from the name, it is a plant that specializes in auto parts and very high quality workmanship. It will be throwing 300 workers out of work in just a few short weeks. The jobs in this plant were decent, union scale jobs, with good wages for the people to raise their families and purchase properties in our community. Third generation people are working in this plant. They are losing their jobs because the government has failed them.
Canada's manufacturing sector is in crisis. In Hamilton in the last year we have lost 11,000 jobs, primarily because of high energy prices, a high dollar and a worsening trade deficit with countries in Asia. It has caused many plants to reduce their output, or to layoff workers, or to close altogether. The value of Canada's manufacturing capital has declined since 2000 because business investment has been unable to even keep up with depreciation.
In the period November 2002 to April 2004, we lost 17,000 jobs in Ontario. However, between the period of April 2004 and February this year, we lost 124,000 jobs.
The government likes to talk about net job creation. In fact, it does create some jobs, but most of those are in other sectors that are low paying or part time jobs. One of the important assets we get from value added manufacturing jobs is they sustain a high number of well paid jobs in our community.
Recently, a delegation, headed by the Canadian Labour Congress, met with our Prime Minister and the Minister of Labour, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Industry. It asked that we immediately implement a buy Canadian procurement policy and that the government tie such a policy to all and any federally funded municipal or provincial infrastructure investments. This would have an immediate impact on the manufacturing sector.
We do not see anything coming from the government in the sense of a strategy. For example, in British Columbia, when it saw it was in trouble a number of years ago, it created the position of a jobs commissioner. My understanding is that of the 125,000 jobs at risk, over 75,000 jobs were saved. There was a significant improvement over what it faced.
Now Canadians across the country, who work in the manufacturing sector, are very concerned. We have another trade deal looming over our heads potentially with Korea. What will that lead to?
To be very clear, we need a strategy in our country that protects jobs in our value added manufacturing sector. What new news can we get from the government today?