Mr. Speaker, if anybody wonders, it is Butt.
—the government dropped this suit in exchange for new commitments that have not been kept.
Now that U.S. Steel aims to sell its Hamilton operations and pull out of Canada, the agreement should be made public. There may be legitimate reasons to redact some portions, but not at the expense of the truth.
U.S. Steel workers, pensioners and the citizens of Hamilton deserve to know what our government agreed to, and why it never enforced the agreement, not to mention what it plans to do now.
They sign their editorials, and that one was signed by Mr. Howard Elliott.
I read that to point out that this is not, again, just the opposition raising an issue and trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. This is already a mountain. This is huge.
So far, I have addressed the fact that it calls for an apology, because in our view, the Conservative federal government has let Hamilton down and let the workers and pensioners at U.S. Steel-Stelco down completely, and we demand and deserve an apology for that incredibly bad decision.
Next, the government owes it to the people of Hamilton, the pensioners, the workers, and the rest of this country to make public the deal that got U.S. Steel out of court. Remember, it was in court. The government was winning, holding U.S. Steel to account on its first round of promises. What got U.S. Steel out of court and out of trouble was this deal, but what is in the deal? It is at the heart of everything. What commitments were made, and are those commitments being honoured? In the event of a breach, what happens? We do not know.
That is why we local MPs are raising the issue. That is why I am putting forward the motion here in front of us. That is why Hamilton City Council has time and time again called for the government to release this information. Now the provincial government has also said that it believes that this information needs to be made public.
That deals with the first two issue. The last one strikes at the human level. It calls for amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, so that in cases of bankruptcy, unlike right now, workers' pensions will not be at the bottom of the list of things to be paid out from whatever assets remain. That is wrong. It is wrong, and here is why.
Corporations and companies can withstand the financial hit of one of their suppliers or clients going bust a lot more than the steelworkers can, who have worked 30, 40 or 45 years and then find out at the end of that grinding life that the pensions they were guaranteed are gone. Anyone who has ever worked in a factory will know and can imagine what decades in that plant are like. Those workers said that they would not take every hour of their wages in pay, but wanted some of it going into a fund that would accumulate over the pay periods, months, years and decades, so that they would have a little bit of a retirement, live in dignity and enjoy whatever remaining years they had in a decent retirement.
This is not to mention those pensioners who have already been retired for 10 and 20 years and now face the prospect of their income being cut by 20%, 30%, or 50% or more. I know what would happen in this place if someone said that MPs should get 50% less than they get right now.
Can members imagine what it is like and how frightening it is for people in Hamilton who worked at Stelco all those years and are about to draw their pensions or are already drawing on them, but which are now in jeopardy? They cannot go and re-live the 30 years. They cannot fix that problem. A company has some means to plan for the future, but what does a working person do when they have put their whole life into a company and are told that the pension money has gone? It is terrifying.
This motion draws attention to what needs to be done. It draws attention to how wrongly and shamefully the people in Hamilton have been treated, and it calls on the government to do the right thing. The government needs to apologize for what has happened to our community and our citizens. It should make the information public; the government does not own it.
Lastly, we need to change the legislation, to protect our pensioners. If we do not step in and protect them, we can see pretty clearly that U.S. Steel and others will not do it. If we do not do it, who will? The people in Hamilton, those steelworkers, are looking to this place to help them.
Approving this motion and following what it asks for would go a long way to bringing dignity, respect, and fairness to the people of Hamilton and the workers and pensioners of Stelco and U.S. Steel, who deserve to be treated better than how they have been treated at the hands of the Conservative government.