Mr. Speaker, over 600 of us marched together on Sherbrooke Street on Sunday, carrying signs that read “Save the jobs” at the Shell refinery in Montreal East. Union members, community groups and citizens, the president of the union, Jean-Claude Rocheleau, the secretary of the FTQ, the mayor of Montreal East, Richard Deschamps from the City of Montreal, and almost all federal and provincial political parties, including the Leader of the Bloc Québécois and myself, came out to show our support.
In closing one of the two remaining refineries in Montreal East, Royal Dutch Shell is taking away 800 direct jobs from Montreal and the province of Quebec, jeopardizing our petrochemical industry and threatening Quebec's energy independence. It is even worse that RDS wants to supply its 281 service stations—with more expensive gasoline refined elsewhere—from a terminal supplied by ships with the risk of environmental disaster on the river.
Closing one refinery in East Montreal will not help save the environment; to do that, we must change consumer habits.