Mr. Speaker, the easy and quick answers are yes and yes, but there is a bigger picture that we are not looking at here.
Yes, there were 450-plus jobs lost at that plant, but we are forgetting about the spinoff jobs that come from that plant. I can speak directly about the spinoff jobs that occur in my community with Vale and Xstrata. We have 17,000 spinoff jobs in the mining supply and services sector. Some in my community say that number is even higher. If we start to see those numbers decrease as well, the unemployment figures are going to drastically rise.
We need to see the writing on the wall that the current plan is not a jobs plan. We need to ensure that we bring forward an agenda, budgets and ideas that will create jobs. Currently what we are seeing is the opposite.