Madam Speaker, I had the great privilege of joining the hon. member for Nickel Belt and the member for Sudbury when the workers at Vale were on strike for almost a year in their fight to protect their pensions and their jobs and to fight for their colleagues who had been laid off. Over 600 workers had been laid off in Sudbury and they were struggling for their livelihoods.
That is exactly what is happening in Hamilton and in the riding of the member for Timmins—James Bay. People are fighting for themselves, for their families and for their communities. When these foreign takeovers happen, they are fire sales of Canada's most precious resources. The people who are paying the price are not only the taxpayers of Canada but, in particular, the workers whose companies are being taken over.
In Hamilton right now, about 1,000 workers will be locked out as of likely midnight this Saturday because of a foreign takeover gone awry. We in the House cannot do anything specifically to help the workers fight the government because the government will not tell us what is specifically in the agreement and what it will do to enforce that agreement. The first glimpses we had of the agreement that was signed were through the media. A little more access happened through the court cases, but there ought to be transparency and accountability at the front end. Workers in Canada deserve nothing less.