Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Compton—Stanstead.
My heart goes out to the workers of the EMD factory. It is never ever easy when massive layoffs take place, in particular at a technologically advanced modern facility. It is one thing for a factory to close when it has old equipment or there are better competitors in the field. However, for a factory to close that has one of the most modern production facilities in the world beggars belief. It makes it very difficult to believe that this was not the plan all along.
This company has a myriad of patents on this equipment. They are worldwide patents. Nobody can build what it builds. It is against the law in most countries where these patents exist for anybody to copy this equipment. There are significant environment regulations about to hit North America that require railroad manufacturers and operators to make their engines cleaner, and ships at sea as well.
This company was on the leading edge of that technology. It was the only company that was going to produce this equipment efficiently, so that operators would not use a urea spray system to clean the air as it escapes. This means rail operators would not have to carry along a tank of urea. This company was on the verge of perfecting that technology. It is a crying shame that the technology and the patents have left Canada. Apparently the equipment is going to leave Canada, too. The expertise and the workers are disposable and have been shelved. The workers will be left to the devices of the EI system. People hope EI offices will not be closing in London soon because a lot of people are going to need them.
There is a United States connection to this disaster as well. President Obama has done what the Conservative government refuses to do. He has insisted that public money in the United States designated for public projects goes to American companies. That is not the case in Canada. There is a lot of public money being spent by all levels of government. However, it is only at the provincial level that there is any requirement whatsoever that the money be spent on workers in Canada.
The Province of Ontario currently has a 25% regulation. If it spends money on public transit projects, it has to spend 25% of the money in Canada on Canadian workers. That is not the case federally. The federal government spends an awful lot of money, though not as much as it should, on public transit projects in this country. Yet it does not guarantee that a nickel of it will be spent on Canadian workers. In fact, it encourages companies that operate in Korea and China to bid on those projects. The government hopes those companies get the projects because Conservatives think taxpayers benefit from cheap labour. The taxpayers are also the workers in London and they did not benefit by the notion of cheap labour.
In the U.S. there is a huge Amtrak order coming. Of course, if EMD wants to access that order, it will have to build the trains in the U.S. because of the U.S. protectionist stance. There is no such stance in Canada. It was easy to close the plant because Canada did not have to worry about whether federal money had any link whatsoever to Canadian jobs.
The folks who actually earned the benefit of that capital cost allowance, the $5 million that flowed through to orders to EMD, are in the process of renewing their entire fleet. CP is re-powering its older fleet of hundreds of engines. CN will follow shortly. GO Transit and VIA Rail will follow because those fleets are not environmentally sound.
They have signed a memorandum of agreement with the Minister of the Environment to re-power their fleets with more environmentally friendly fleets. Now they cannot have the work done in Canada. The plant is closed and they have to go to the United States. They will still get the capital cost allowance, the tax benefit to the Canadian owners is still there, but they will now have to buy that equipment in the United States because we did nothing about stopping it.
GO Transit, a provincially regulated, owned and operated heavy commuter rail system currently has 57 engines pulling its trains around Toronto. It is in the process of ordering many more because commuter rail is expanding in Toronto, in part with federal money. Every single one of those 57 original engines was built at the EMD plant. The shell was built elsewhere for some of them, but every one of those engines was built in London.
Now those workers can look as the money flows out from GO Transit. Every one of those engines has to be rebuilt within the next 10 years. Every dollar will now go to Muncie, Indiana or somewhere else in the United States where there is another manufacturer, because they cannot be purchased in Canada. Why not? Because the only plant that built locomotive engines in Canada has now closed.
There is no reason for this to happen. Ontario has a 25% buy Ontario policy. There is no equivalent buy Canada policy from the Conservative government because it prefers that the taxpayer be protected by being able to buy in China, Korea, or in this case, the United States. GO Transit is going to refurbish all of those locomotives very soon. It was looking at EMD because it was at the leading edge of companies providing the environmental protection that GO Transit has been ordered to provide by the minister of the environment in Ontario. Now it cannot do that.
The Province of Ontario has an air-rail link, a train from the airport. It uses diesel engines bought in Japan. Why? Because it said there was no manufacturer in Ontario. The Liberal premier of Ontario said, “we are going to waive our buy Ontario policy because there is no plant in Ontario that could build that”. There is, but there is some other business going on.
When GO Transit has to buy another 57 engines, the Province of Ontario will be able to say the plant is gone, so feel free to buy anywhere. If GO Transit has to buy from EMD because it has the best technology, then the workers in Muncie, Indiana making $16 an hour will be the ones to get the benefit of tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer money.
That is wrong. We have done a disservice to the whole transportation sector in this country. We had one of the best employers in the world, building the best engines in the world, at the leading edge of the best technology in the world. That employer has now gone.
CN and CP are Canadian companies and get the capital cost allowance. I do not know if VIA and GO get the capital cost allowance. Those companies now have to go elsewhere. The capital cost allowance does not generate a single Canadian job.
One of the speakers earlier suggested that EMD did not get a single tax break from the government. I did not realize that there was a clause in the $60 billion reduction in corporate taxes that said EMD is exempt from this reduction. I think it did get a pretty tax break, but now it has left the country.