Mr. Speaker, my colleague comes from Ontario, too, and his speech had a lot in it that was in another familiar speech given about 10 years ago by a colleague in his brother's government. Back when the Ontario government brought in the Green Energy Act, a gentleman named Smitherman mentioned that 50,000 new jobs would be created. The member's brother said it would be difficult switching from making cars to windmills and that it was not an easy thing to transform an economy.
Unfortunately, these things did not come to pass. In 2012, Stats Canada actually said that the Green Energy Act would lead to an overall employment drop of 2,200 to 2,500 full-time-equivalent jobs. Overall employment in Ontario basically has been stagnant for the last decade with decreased jobs in mining, manufacturing, and forestry; decreased competitiveness internationally; decreased profitability; and decreased wages. In my community, we are living it in the automotive sector and we are seeing the challenges with international competitiveness.
Has the federal government actually done a cost-benefit analysis and an economic analysis of what the effects of this policy would be for Canadians, particularly in the manufacturing sector?