Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.
This is my first speech in the House since the 2011 election. I am very proud to represent the great riding of Timmins—James Bay. I would like to wish the Franco-Ontarian community a happy Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. I have a great deal of respect for the Franco-Ontarian community, for its identity and for its language.
I wish I were there with them but they know why we are here. We are here for a principle that was wonderfully articulated by the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound who, I think, finally told us the Conservative viewpoint.
He talked about the senior citizens in his riding who told him that they were tickled pink that their son got a job at $12 an hour for three days a week and that he should be lucky he has a job. I have heard that language before from that kind of Republican Tea Party mentality, that one should just be lucky enough to get whatever they give you.
I have never had a senior citizen come up to me and say that they were tickled pink that their adult son could only find three days of work a week. The senior citizens in my riding are asking what has happened in our country that their 28-year-old son or daughter is still living at home because he or she is getting by on minimum wage. They tell me that when they were younger they built up a pension plan in Canada, but they know that their children will not have the kind of pension or the kind of life that they fought for. What has happened in our country?
One can hear it from the benches over there with the smug comments about the union bosses and that this is somehow rural people being picked on by urban people, the division and wedge issues.
I did hear my hon. colleagues from the Conservative Party on the bus talking about the SOBs, the workers. That was their attitude. They came in and they were all smug. They need someone to blame so they come in here and pretend that they are not picking sides. The message was clear: a crown corporation shut down service--