Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's speech.
I come from Windsor, Ontario, where we have suffered incredibly with manufacturing job losses. Not just this year but for the last four to five years we have seen a significant downturn. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost in my community while government policy has been very much absent. People basically have to make decisions about whether to keep their homes or whether to send their kids to college or university. We have witnessed a downturn that is so significant it has undermined the fiscal capacity even of this country. We used to have economic earners that would contribute quite a bit to the tax coffers of this country.
We have not seen any government policy. We have been fighting this nonsense for a number of years, with the current Conservative regime and with the previous Liberal one, where they thought that if they just gave general corporate tax cuts without a strategy, we would see economic development and growth. That is not the case for the automotive industry. It is not the case for the tool and die and mould-making industry. The best on the planet, in Windsor, is actually going under because of the fiscal problems and the borrowing practices.
They are being undermined by the unfair competition of trade barriers, be it particular ones or non-tariff trade barriers that are implemented. They cost Canadians jobs, and they are the best in the world.
I listened to my colleague. He understands that have a corporate tax cut when companies do not make a profit does not help them rebound. The same holds true with research and development, if they do not have access to the grants that are available through the SR and D program. Because they did not make a profit, it does not lead to the changes that are necessary, or it does not provide the capital that they need to advance into alternative types of competitive industries, transforming, for example, from the auto sector to some other sector. They do not have that availability even to compete.
My question for my friend is simple. He sat on the plane thinking about this. Why does he not support his friend and vote against this budget bill so we do not undermine the fiscal capacity of this country and instead put in programs that actually work for him and his friend?