moved:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) apologize to the people of Hamilton for approving the 2007 foreign takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel, on the grounds that it has failed to provide a net benefit to Hamilton and Canada; (b) make public the commitments U.S. Steel agreed to under the Investment Canada Act in respect of the acquisition of Stelco Inc. in 2007, and the 2011 out-of-court settlement, concerning employment and production guarantees and maintenance of the employee pension system; and (c) take immediate action to ensure pension benefits for the 15,000 employees and pensioners remain fully funded and protected, including amending the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act to protect worker pensions in the event of bankruptcy.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to bring my motion before the House. This will be the first hour of discussion on the motion. If plans go accordingly, early in the New Year there should be an opportunity for the second hour and then hopefully not long after that an actual vote.
My reason for bringing the motion forward is not because I have suddenly become delusional and believe that we can muster a majority on our side to make what we want happen, although I wish we could. With optimism, I look forward to the next election when we may have the opportunity to do that, but it will not be just motions, it will be bills that would make a difference for the people of my community of Hamilton and the rest of Canada.
However, we will do everything we can in this struggle to ensure that, at the very least, the government is not allowed to let this item just quietly slip away, because what is at stake is just too important.
Canadians know that Hamilton is Steeltown. It is changing now if we look at employment and where most of the jobs are, but nonetheless for the time being and in our proud history, we are Steeltown. It was known as the home of Stelco and Defasco. For the most part, things went along fairly good for the community, with some give and take. Then all of a sudden in 2007, the government approved the takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel and it has been darkness ever since.
I want to read into the record an extract from the Investment Canada Act, so we understand exactly the government's responsibility in this regard. The Investment Canada Act says in part the following:
—the purposes of this Act are to provide for the review of significant investments in Canada by non-Canadians in a manner that encourages investment, economic growth and employment opportunities in Canada...
The takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel has been anything but a net benefit to my community and the citizens who are there, and the smaller businesses that support that corporation. There is no net benefit, not when one of the corporation's earliest acts was to lock out the workers. This was not a strike but a lockout. Why did it lock them out? So the corporation could attack the pension plan of workers. That alone, in my view, warrants an apology to the people of Hamilton by the current government.
I see my friend over there wants me to quiet down. It is not his constituents and their pensions. The last thing the people at home in my community want is for me to be quiet on this issue. They want noise. They want attention. They want action. That is why the motion is here. The importance of this issue is not going to be lost. Whether we win or not ultimately remains to be seen, but we are not going to lose this.
That is why I put in the motion that its the government's responsibility, its sacred responsibility, to review potential foreign takeovers to ensure that exactly what happened in Hamilton with U.S. Steel does not happen again. It is not supposed to happen. Under the legislation, it is the responsibility of the federal government, when it reviews these kinds of buyouts, to ensure that does not happen. The government let Canada down. It let the workers and the pensioners of Stelco and U.S. Steel down completely, not to mention the city of Hamilton, and I will get to that in a moment.
The other thing my motion asks for is that the secret deal that got U.S. Steel out of court for not honouring its first set of commitments needs to be made public, unless the government thinks that it can just brush that off as just being the opposition, or that it is just Rolf Gerstenberger, the president of Local 1005, who says those kinds of things, that it is those kinds of folks. It is not the case.
Let me put on the record a letter dated September 24, this year, to the federal Minister of Industry from the provincial Minister of Economic Development, Mr. Brad Duguid, and he said:
As the CCAA process continues, it would be helpful for all parties to better understand the details of the 2011 settlement between the Government of Canada and US Steel Corporation related to the company's Investment Canada Act obligations and potential implications for Ontario and Hamilton. We fully recognize that there may be legal challenges to releasing commercially sensitive information, however, it would be helpful for all parties if the federal government could share this information with all levels of government to ensure that we are all well informed. Anything you can do to assist in this matter would be most appreciated.
I am doing what I can to try to assist. I sure hope the minister is listening.
I said it was more than just a few voices in Hamilton or in Ontario. Hamilton City Council has a special committee on this issue, on the steel industry, and it is very seized of this issue. Up until now, councillor Scott Duvall has been the chair of this, and by the way, he is a steelworker himself and certainly understands the issues.
The council has been calling for this information, because the impact on Hamilton's revenue is huge. Millions and millions of dollars stand to be lost if this corporation closes and those jobs are lost. The city is quite worried, because like every other older city, it has all kinds of challenges already without suddenly having millions of dollars of tax revenue being taken away.
In terms of the broader community, The Hamilton Spectator, on September 26, 2014, just within the last couple of months, under the heading “The Spectator's View: Ottawa should come clean on U.S. steel deal”, said:
Is it possible the federal government will heed the growing calls for it to lift the veil of secrecy covering the deal it struck with U.S. Steel back in 2011? The most recent demand for that comes from Ontario's Economic Development Minister, Brad Duguid, who wants the secrecy to end in order to protect provincial interests.
It's a reasonable demand. The chronology is as follows: U.S. Steel bought Stelco in 2007 and, amid foreign-ownership concerns, made promises around minimum employment and production. Not long after, it idled production in spite of its commitments. The federal government sued to enforce the promises and won a preliminary round. But suddenly, in 2011—