Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my friend from Cape Breton and I have also been listening to the comments coming from the Conservative benches, in particular the Minister of Labour, who somehow managed on three occasions in her speech to misconstrue the entire situation by calling it a strike rather than what it is, which is a lockout. I do not know if that was wilful ignorance or a lack of experience in dealing with these kinds of things. We here on the New Democratic benches have a lot of experience in this.
Is the very reason that we have these labour laws in place not because some time ago when there were many strikes and many disruptions employers asked for some sort of fair negotiating practice alongside working people? To undermine this process takes us back to a time when we had more strikes, more disruption of services and they destabilized the very economy that Conservatives seem to care so much about but do so little about.