Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise today to talk about manufacturing across this great country of ours and how our government has set the proper balance. It puzzled me when I read this motion today that says New Democrats, through this motion, want to move toward somewhat of a balanced economy. I am not certain that I understand that term in NDP terms.
Perhaps it is best explained by the New Democrats, who have said it publicly, and will campaign on raising the taxes of the largest corporations in Canada. Many of them would be directly involved in manufacturing and creating the thousands of jobs that manufacturing supports in communities like mine: the city of Brantford, the County of Brant, the Six Nations of the Grand River, and Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation.
My community has a distinct story to tell about manufacturing. At the turn of the century, manufacturing in Brantford was the third largest in all of Canada, producing all the farm implements that went around the world, all of the heavy manufacturing that went along with the industrial revolution. It was only behind Montreal and Toronto in those years. Much of the transport of those goods went down the Grand River, into Lake Erie, into the Great Lakes, and then to Europe and other parts of the world where the farms were revolutionized.
I set this context for a reason. When that industry was in its worst condition, suffering because of poor public policy and other economic factors, and had its demise, my community had 30% unemployment, in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and beyond. The good news is that today my community has one of the lowest rates it has ever had, at 6.7% unemployment. Why is that? It is because we have set the platform in this country for manufacturers to succeed.
Let me talk about some of the things our government has done in my community, specifically through economic development initiatives through FedDev Ontario, which is the economic development arm of southwestern Ontario.
I am going to talk about two specific heavy manufacturing companies in my community. The first one is Patriot Forge. Patriot Forge makes large castings for all types of resource industries across the world. Back in 2008 when I was running in the election, it had been saying it owned manufacturing plants as well in the United States, Ohio and Michigan, and it would move the company out of Canada if a carbon tax were imposed, which the Liberals promised to bring in at the time. At the time, it had 224 employees, and it had done the calculation that the Liberals were proposing during that election. Had the carbon tax come to fruition, it would have added $9,000 a year per employee to the cost of its overhead. That is how much fuel it consumes in its forging furnaces.
Thank goodness it did not happen. Thank goodness our government and the Canadian people resisted it and the Conservatives formed government. I can say that what Patriot Forge has gone on to do within the last three weeks—an announcement was made during the last constituency week—is double the size of its corporation right here in Canada, in Brantford, Ontario. It is moving toward a whole new customer base because of the free trade agreements our government has put in place around the world to expand its markets, and over the next five years it will hire another 150 employees in that expansion, a $63 million expansion.
What role did FedDev Ontario play? It provided it with a $10 million repayable loan. This is what governments should be doing when they can support manufacturing that is on the cutting edge to be able to move its product into new markets. We should be supporting it with repayable loans.
The second company I would like to talk about is Hematite. This is a company that, when I first met it three years ago, had 12 employees. The company was recycling the waste materials from auto manufacturing and making them into parts for auto manufacturing. Primarily, it was making the parts that would be under the hood or in the wheel wells of a vehicle, those kinds of acoustic parts. It was grinding the waste and making these parts.
When the minister for FedDev Ontario was in my riding, we paid a visit to see how business was going from three years ago and 12 employees. Today, three years later, it has 120 employees. The company was successful three years ago in having an application approved by FedDev Ontario to develop economically. It had a business plan that it put it into place, and we supported it with a $500,000 repayable loan.
I am happy to tell this House today, by the way, that the money has been repaid and is now being recycled back into other companies to create manufacturing jobs.
My community, as well, I should say, has attracted many people. Another company that has recently located there is Massilly, which makes the tops to jars and cans and all of the basic materials that go into all of our consumer products. It creates the metal tops that go onto these things. That company brought more than 200 jobs to our community. The reason it has not moved to the United States and has expanded in Canada into my community is the corporate tax rate and what we have done in terms of reducing corporate taxes, plus the skilled labour force that we have in my community.
We are talking about a heritage of proud manufacturing families that goes back over 100 years. These are the kinds of jobs that the opposition is directly talking about. Yet, it is talking about them flying off to different parts of the world, while we are watching, in my community and other parts of southern Ontario.
The auto industry was mentioned, on the other side, and the types of things that are happening. Let me talk about the auto industry as I see it from my frame of reference in my community. All of Hematite's 120 jobs are to supply the auto industry, which is booming. It is booming in Oakville, where Ford has just added 1,000 new jobs at its plant. Toyota expanded its operations over the past number of years in Woodstock, Ontario, to meet the market demand. It did not move off to Mexico or somewhere else. It has a huge plant in Woodstock, Ontario, just down the road from my community. Chrysler has invested $2 billion in its plant in Windsor, securing all of the jobs in that plant, but also adding, again, a whole new level of employment for people in manufacturing.
Generations of families exist in my community who have spent their lives in manufacturing, and we are at one of the lowest unemployment rates we have seen in 50 years.
I think my colleague who just spoke before me mentioned that really the rubber meets the road with the opposition when it comes to voting. It really does. As a member of Parliament, I can say that. Also, as a businessman myself, owning my own company my whole working life, I can tell members that a lot of what is said is rhetoric, but the rubber meets the road when we vote.
It is all these things. Let me underscore some of the things the opposition voted against: lowering the federal corporate income tax rate to 15%; extending the accelerated capital cost allowance for new investment in machinery and equipment, which is today what the opposition is proposing—it is bizarre because it voted against it; the automotive innovation fund; establishing the national shipbuilding procurement strategy; the advanced manufacturing fund; the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario. The list goes on.
Our government has set the platform for success in manufacturing; in particular, I have given some examples today from my part of the world, southern Ontario.