Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her work as well as the question.
I have actually written the minister. We have had interventions, and we can tell that the Conservatives are clearly uncomfortable about this because they know what they have done is wrong. They know it, but it is time for them to fix it. They can no longer hide and run away from it; they need to fix it.
Canadians can build for their men and women of service. They can do that. They are competent, capable and able to do so. Why does the government fail to see the value of its own workforce, a workforce that could actually procure and develop this? That is not acceptable. It needs to be reversed.
People really need to understand that this issue is not only about Windsor and Chatham-Kent—Essex, but about our entire country. We look at the potential for some new ships being built, often described as rowboats or tiny boats because they are small craft. Where are they going to be built? Everything counts at this point in time.
The rules are very clear. The United States does a lot of its own defence procurement, and we respect that. As a nation, we have not challenged the Americans. We have not taken them to court. We have not tried to renegotiate these elements. We have accepted it as a country, and they would accept the same from us, because that is part of a partnership. What is good for one is good for the other, unless we want to engage in a wider discussion. If we actually had the policy, maybe that would happen with the United States, and we would engage in discussion and go down that road. However, simply doing nothing is not acceptable.
How we can tender a $300 million contract to a source company outside this country at the same time that trained people are being handed pink slips to go home? They are trained and doing it right now. They are doing truck production. In fact when Navistar tried to move some production down to Mexico, where it had been doing some of this, for a period of time it had to send those vehicles back to Chatham to be fixed, because Mexico was not doing the right job.
The people have the qualifications and experience. They want to produce the trucks for our men and women in military service. They want to be part of the procurement, not just because it is a job but because it is a mission for our country. It is about the connection and the bond of people being able to do procurement for their own military and having pride in a nation. Why the government does not understand that is beyond me. Why can it not just say that it made a mistake and is going to fix it, and that Canadians are the ones who are going to be doing the procurement?
In terms of actually retooling the facility, $800,000 is nothing. Interestingly enough, we would then have the capacity to increase the volume if necessary, to fix vehicles with additional parts, and to service the vehicles. All those things would be done here. The United States would simply understand that, because they have it in their system, and we respect it.