Mr. Speaker, I think it goes without question that of all members of Parliament who have been through this place in the last decade, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore is the greatest champion of the shipbuilding industry, and members would be wise to pay some heed to his words of caution.
What he is presenting today, in such passionate tones, is something we all need to understand in terms of manufacturing in general. When it is destroyed, it is so much more difficult to build back again. It is not, “Do not worry, we'll let it go by the wayside now and we'll replenish it later on”. We hear this from Liberals right now. These things take decades and decades to be built up, but can be destroyed in a very short amount of time.
When a shipbuilding yard, especially of a sizable nature, loses consistent business over time and has a government, and successive governments, design policies that undermine and undercut its ability to employ people, how much more difficult is it to regenerate the energy, the interest and the enthusiasm around its yard when orders do show up, hopefully some time in the future?