Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. I know that both the member for Sudbury and the member for Nickel Belt have been tireless champions of the steelworkers' cause in their home communities, and I commend them for those efforts.
The member for Sudbury is absolutely right. That issue is not one that is just impacting Sudbury. My home town, as I said earlier in my speech, is Hamilton. Just down the road is Nanticoke, where we have a plant where first, workers were being laid off in March and then the others were locked out just a few months after that. Why?
Stelco is what people thought about when they thought about Steel-town. What happened to Stelco? It was bought out by U.S. Steel, yet another foreign takeover.
The government has said it is going to take U.S. Steel to court. The workers are still locked out. That was months ago. We are still waiting for a decision. What happens if the decision is favourable? First, it will probably be appealed and even if the appeal is denied and the court decision can go forward, we are talking about months and months of legal proceedings that at best will perhaps get the government some fines that the company will have to pay.
For me, the bottom line is not those fines. The bottom line is this. What is happening to family-sustaining jobs in communities like Hamilton, Sudbury and, indeed, in communities right across the country? Workers are losing their jobs. They are being locked out. I defy the government to demonstrate to any member in the House where the net public benefit is of such actions. It is the government's job to protect that net public benefit under the Investment Canada Act.
The government has failed to stand up for workers. It has failed to stand up for them in foreign takeovers and it is has failed to stand up for them in this budget.