Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question and his work as well in committee. Apparently, he will not be on the industry committee this time and we will miss him.
With regard to the unspent money, it is tragic that we were not taking this money and acting. We had opportunities, which is why I highlighted GM. It procured a Korean-type technology for the battery system for its electric vehicles as well as the Volt itself. Even a company that is challenged right now is setting up a brand new environmentally friendly vehicle and we did not even compete for that. Here in Canada it took a lot of hard movement and pressure to get the federal government to even participate in a new engine development at Ford in Windsor. It is one of the good things that has happened.
At the same time, it showed the differences. General Motors will be investing billions of dollars in the United States accessing its new manufacturing $25 billion loan program. Meanwhile, we have not had a response to it. These are difficult things. If we do not talk to the U.S. about what it is doing, then we either need decide to get in the game or not. We need to be careful about how we do that but we do need to make that decision.
One of the things we are worried about is the ecoAuto rebate program where Canadian taxpayers' money went abroad to basically support other industries. The United States is looking to protect its industries right now, whereas we actually shovelled it out. Ironically, it kept the tax part on the vehicles. It added new taxes on top of those vehicles and a lot of that money comes from vehicles made in Canada. That is unacceptable.