Mr. Speaker, I was really impressed by the breadth of my colleague's knowledge about the impact of this budget on his home province of British Columbia and on his own riding.
My home riding is Hamilton Mountain in Ontario. Our province has been absolutely decimated by the loss of manufacturing sector jobs. In my home town alone, 11,000 of those jobs have been lost.
When people look to this budget and to the government, they want real help. What they had hoped for, at a minimum, was some real investment in employment insurance and some real access to retraining so they could get jobs in new fields because the manufacturing sector is being decimated in part because of the trade policies that were started under former Conservative prime minister, Brian Mulroney, but the same environment exists now for trade and for the economy in this country today.
I know the member does not have the same manufacturing base that I have in my riding but I would think that issues like EI and retraining would be equally important to the forestry sector. He has been an eloquent spokesperson against the softwood sellout that was so readily supported by other parties in the House but which has devastated many workers and their families in my colleague's province.
I just wonder whether my colleague could comment on whether he is getting the same groundswell of outcry because the government failed to do anything for working families in this country.