Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his important contribution to the debate today on the concurrence motion on the report from the industry committee about manufacturing in Canada.
It is very important what he has been saying about the need for a particular sectoral approach to deal with the manufacturing industries in Canada. Our member on the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology made the point in his supplementary to the report that there was nothing in the recommendations of the report that dealt with specific sectoral strategies.
For a long time New Democrats have called for specific sectoral manufacturing strategies for the auto sector, shipbuilding, forestry and the textile industry, among others. Unfortunately, the recommendations of the report ignore that.
Given the experience that the member had in the Ontario government in the 1990s where that kind of approach bore real fruit in terms of dealing with the communities affected by a recession, could the member talk about why he thinks that approach is still largely ignored by our federal government and why the federal government will not engage in a sectoral strategy and why it will not put these kinds of plans in place when his experience has shown that they are so effective?