Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity about a month ago, maybe a month and a half ago, to do an economic stimulus tour of the riding. This was for the media. We went from place to place to look at shovel ready projects, and one place we went to was the shipyard. We met there with Karl Risser, who is president of CAW Local 1. He talked about the fact that these jobs, as I mentioned earlier, are great jobs, are good paying jobs, and that for every one job, there are four spinoff jobs. However, referring to the point that my colleague raised, a lot of those men and women are out west now. They are not able to work in Nova Scotia. The work just is not there. They are fleeing. They are looking for work. They need to support their families.
Karl talked about the repairs project for shipbuilding. He said, “That's going to be a good thing. We'll certainly put some folks to work. But it's not good for the long-term because the men and women who have left Nova Scotia, looking for work, are not going to come back for a one month contract or for a three month contract”.
The issue here is that they have skills. This is extremely skilled work. We really need to bring those people back to Nova Scotia and have them working in the industry in which they are trained.
I would like to address what my colleague said about how in his riding the industry, the unions, the workers and the community worked together to come up with innovative solutions, and I will bring us back to the breaking-through report. I actually have a letter here from Jamie Vaslet who is with the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers, in which he talks about this report as well. He states:
We have, along with all other major stakeholders in the shipbuilding industry, including owners, operators and the Shipbuilding Association of Canada, all expressed the need for a carve out of our industry. But it seems to have fallen on deaf ears yet again.
He says as well that it is quite unbelievable that we are in a situation now where this amendment, and we have been listening to what all the stakeholders are saying, is the perfect solution. It is so simple, but yet we are not listening to the key stakeholders. We are not listening to the people whose jobs are at stake and we are not listening to the employers as well