Mr. Speaker, the NDP claims it stands up for workers, but its actions tell a different story.
While NDP MPs found time to support a few dozen radical activists protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline, not a single NDP MP bothered to show up to support Canada's building trade unions at their event on Thursday night. Nine NDP MPs confirmed their attendance, but none showed up. Apparently the NDP support for union workers does not extend to those working in Canada's oil sands.
Forty percent of these workers are actively engaged in the oil and gas industry. Canada's oil sands directly employ 132,000 people and provide hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs across Canada. With Keystone XL and other projects, it is projected that Canada's oil sands will employ over 600,000 workers, directly and indirectly in the future.
The union official hosting the event Thursday said that the NDP would be very bad for workers and the entire Canadian economy. I could not agree more.