Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley raises a crucial point. The fact is these highly skilled workers will not wait around for the government to make up its mind. They have to feed and look after their families. They will move on to other sectors.
When the Saint John yard in New Brunswick shut down, a lot of the workers went to the United States. They are still there working in American yards when they should be working here. Shipowners and shipbuilders need long lead times to get the yards up and running and to obtain the skilled trades they need to build the vessels. It is not something that turns on a dime.
At the end of day, all we are really asking the government to do is pay half as much attention to the shipbuilding industry as it does to the aerospace industry. If it did that, the yards would not need subsidies. We need concrete investments that allow the owners and builders to hire workers to get the job done, as my Conservative colleagues so fondly like to remind us each time they speak.