Mr. Speaker, on Saturday I was proud to join more than 2,000 Hamiltonians, including Don Frasier, Rolf Gerstenberger, Bob Bratina, Andrea Horwath, Paul Miller and the NDP MPs for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek and Hamilton Mountain who marched to show their anger and frustration with industry and government attacks on their jobs and their pensions.
Like other manufacturing employees in the Ontario heartland, steelworkers are being laid off by the thousands. The very survival of our southern Ontario communities is at risk.
But the people of Hamilton are not known for just lying down and taking it. We are fighters and we will fight for decent jobs, fight for livable pensions and fight for the well-being of our community.
In fact, just last week Hamiltonians also took to the streets to save CHCH, our local TV news station.
Here is the message that those 2,000 workers asked us to bring back to the government: Stop ignoring layoffs. Stop ignoring the unemployed. Stop allowing foreign companies to control Canada. And stop pretending that fixing our economy is somebody else's problem.