Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with the member for Vaudreuil—Soulanges.
I am quite pleased to be standing here today to talk about this. I would like to commend the member for Burnaby—New Westminster for his role in the natural resources committee when it comes to foreign takeovers or trade deals.
I would also like to thank and congratulate the member for LaSalle—Émard, our industry critic, on the wonderful work she is doing on behalf of her constituents.
I worked in the mines for 34 years and in my last few years the company that I worked for, Inco at the time, was bought out by a foreign company from Brazil. When foreign companies purchase Canadian companies, they not only export our natural resources but we import an attitude. There is an attitude the comes with these foreign companies. It is an attitude that is not just for the Canadian workers and for the communities. I will get to that later, but I wanted to bring it up right now.
As we know, the mineral industry is a boom and bust cycle. It is good for 10 years, then it is down, then it is good. Miners get laid off, miners get hired, communities boom and then there is a downfall.
Last night I went to a mining safety forum. The reason I was there was because two miners in Sudbury were killed, Jordan Fram and Jason Chenier. They were killed by what we call in the mining industry “a run of muck”. For those who do not understand what a run of muck is, it is like a mud slide or an avalanche. It is when water gets into the muck and lets go. It is not stoppable.
I went there last night to hear the speakers. Among the speakers were family members. We want an inquiry into these deaths. That is why I talked about importing an attitude a while ago. Everyone in that mine, including management, knew there was a problem. They knew because they had been sent emails. The place had been barricaded. The barricades were taken down. The member who put up the barricades and sent these emails was one of the miners who was killed. That is very unfortunate.
I want to go back to the attitude. After that forum I received an email from Tim. I want to read it so everyone will understand why I am talking about attitude. He says:
Hello Claude thank you for being part of this much needed inquiry. To me it's insane that there were no charges for what happened at Stobie. Yet a man gets fired for getting hit by a loose at Coleman.
A loose is a fall of rock. He goes on to say:
Try to understand he gets fired for not following procedure yet Stobie management disregarded one of the most important procedures in the underground setting. I was recently fired from Vale for putting in a work refusal.
For those who do not know what a work refusal is, it is when a miner finds a situation that is unsafe. The miner can put in a work refusal because he thinks something is unsafe. This guy was fired because of that.
He further states:
I will now have to go to arbitration which will take a year or two. I can't believe the fear the men and women are working in. It is one thing to talk about at the meeting but to live it every day is very sad and frustrating I was working in disbelief every day. I will give you one example but there are many. One of my fellow miners broke his ribs at work and did not report it because of the fear of discipline.
That is why I was talking about attitude. We give these companies the right to invest in Canada, but they bring with them an attitude that is un-Canadian.
I want to quote a good friend of mine, the international president of the United Steelworkers, Leo Gerard, a former Sudbury native, on the value of good-paying jobs. He states:
Virtually 90% of wages and benefits earned by our members in the Vale Inco mines, plants and smelter have been spent in Greater Sudbury. The $190 million paid out to workers in nickel bonus, which over the years equates to slightly more 1% of company profits, has found its way into every nook and cranny of Sudbury and area businesses, services and charities. Home renovations and construction, autos and trucks, boats and ATVs, department and grocery stores, men's, ladies' and children's wear stores, restaurants and theatres, corner stores and bakeries, yard sales and bingo halls, all businesses and many charities shared in the wealth and prosperity of unions' collective bargaining.
This is something that foreign companies do not understand. They try to import, along with their attitude, wages and labour practices, standards from other countries that are well below the Canadian standard. The Conservative government also does not understand economics 101, that good-paying union jobs in a town feed and grow our local and national economies.
Some takeovers are good, some are bad, some are ugly. I have a list of the good things, but it is short.
In Sudbury, these companies have donated to charity and invested significantly in clean air technologies. We all know that in order to grow, Canada needs foreign investment, there is no disputing that, and we know that Canada was built on trade and foreign investment. Foreign investment can play a positive role in building our country as long as it is done right.
Now let me speak about the bad and the ugly. We lose when we sacrifice control. I will not be able to get through my whole speech, so I will jump to the last page.
The bottom line on foreign takeovers has to be Canada, not another country. The bottom line has to be our workers, communities and local economies, not a foreign corporation taking as many resources out of the ground or our water in as fast a time as possible. The bottom line has to be a Government of Canada that represents Canada and Canadians and does not only shrug about globalization and the new economy. The bottom line has to be accountability, transparency and everyone knowing the promises made to win government approval, because promises made must be promises kept.