Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments, and I listened with interest. I do not know how long he has been a member of the NDP, maybe a long time, maybe not. I know some of his colleagues have not been a part of the party for a long time.
I wonder if he is aware that the NDP has quite a long and distinguished history of strike breaking. For example, in 1966, the federal NDP supported legislation to break a railway workers' strike. In the same year there was a longshoremen's strike and they supported that legislation. In 1973 they supported legislation to end a railway strike. Perhaps most troubling, in 1975 the federal NDP and the provincial NDP governments in both B.C. and Saskatchewan supported Bill C-73, that famous bill that had wage control measures that not only limited wage increases but rolled wages back. The NDP supported that.
Is he aware of these things? To hear them speak today, that would never be acceptable, yet it was acceptable in their history. Does he think there might be some situations where the government does have to take a role as we have done today?