Mr. Speaker, this past weekend, I attended a rally held in front of the Beta Brands plant, in London, Ontario. This plant closed more than two years ago and workers are still waiting for money owed to them. They did not receive any severance and their pensions are gone. Workers at this plant have lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings. Some had to wait six weeks or more for EI and others six months or more to even find out if they could access retraining.
Plant closures and layoffs in London have been far too frequent and are devastating to the people involved and to our community. Lives are thrown into turmoil with every closure.
More needs to be done to address these job losses. The government needs to fix the employment insurance system, create more opportunities for retraining and implement all of the NDP's workers first bill to protect those pensions.