Yes, my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour is absolutely right. I think we will find in question period, which will start in about an hour and a half, some real discussion around this F-35 fiasco.
The Canadian Association of Professional Employees applied an economic model developed by Statistics Canada to the information contained in the 2012 federal budget, which included $5.2 billion of spending cuts and a reduction in the size of the federal public service through the elimination of 19,200 jobs.
The Statistics Canada model indicated that job losses in the public and private sectors would affect all parts of Canada to varying degrees, and the Canadian Association of Professional Employees found that the announced cuts would result in the following job losses by region.
Here we go; here is where we really get a sense of the magnitude of what the government has done. Whether it knew it was doing it or not, whether it understood the economic impact of the multiplier effect or not, I cannot speculate. What is very clearly true is that when there are job losses in the tens of thousands, in this massive way, this is going to provoke exactly what the rating agencies, Fitch and Moody's, and so many economists are warning about, that after all the economic problems we have had over the last few months with the factory closures that I mentioned earlier, the plant closures, the loss of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, economists and Fitch and Moody's and the rating agencies were all saying, “Do not cut deep; if you throw more people out of work, what you are going to do is provoke an even worse economic downturn”.
Now we are seeing the results. That is exactly what it is doing. Here are job losses by region. In the province of British Columbia, where I come from, what will happen is 5,869 British Columbia families will lose the breadwinner, 5,869. That is for my province of British Columbia, and that is catastrophic.
I will give one comparison. The last time we talked about job losses of this magnitude is when the mean-spirited government brought in the softwood lumber sellout. We fought that in this House, and in fact I fought it in committee. I remember speaking for 16 hours against what was a horribly poorly negotiated agreement. We knew it would lead to jobs losses. In my area of Burnaby—New Westminster, scant weeks after the government pushed through the softwood lumber sellout, 2,000 jobs evaporated. Three plants were closed.