Madam Speaker, I am glad to rise on this issue, talking about employment and the value-added chain of jobs that are important for this nation. I am just sad it is being done in such haste and such waste by the Liberal government.
It is unfortunate, as we struggle to protect value-added jobs in our economy, that we have, quite frankly, a significant opportunity lost, and we are rewarding bad behaviour. We hear this lingo coming from only a few people from the Liberal Party on this, whether it be question period or debate in the House of Commons, because others do not seem to want to participate. In fact, it is going back to the future. We are going back and pulling that to the future right now, because this legislation is retroactively going back on a deal that Canadians had actually gained through bargaining.
This would be like individuals winning the lottery. They would get their ticket. They would win the lottery and cash it in, and then they realize 10 years later that they did not really need that money so they give it all back to the lottery commission.
This is what is happening. It is a negotiated deal. It is like individuals saying to their auto insurer or their house insurer that they really do not need protection for house damage, car damage, or whatever. The individual knows these insurers are struggling for whatever reason, and tells them they are off the hook now for that deal.
The interesting thing about this is that we are talking about a private corporation that was founded by the taxpayers of this nation. It is rewarded by numerous grants and legislative processes. It is to bring competition into the market for fairness for Canadians, eventually privatized, cashed out, bailed out, received numerous injections of public support, including to this day most recently corporate tax reductions. The corporation got all that investment and all it was asked to do was keep some Canadian jobs. To keep some Canadian jobs is what it was asked in this brokered, open deal that the public can see, Parliament can see. Its CEOs, new, current, and in the future, as part of their due diligence were to run a company, to run a business and to put the Canadian flag on their product. The loss of that is the constant outsourcing that has taken place.
What is really interesting about the bill is the other subsidization that is taking place in this country, and investment by our working class in terms of education we are now throwing out the window with all those value-added jobs. Young people were promised that if they went to school, got a trade, and contributed, they would be rewarded. This is part of that demise, only hurried by the Liberals.
What the Liberals want to do to the public is just like a crop-duster, running across and dumping its stuff. It is to put the shroud in front of Canadians and say we negotiated a deal, but because we finally won one, we are used to actually losing lots of deals, but we won one, we would like to give it back.
This deal was about public investment. We should think about men and women and the youth of this country who are getting trained right now. They are spending their hard-earned money, taking loans way above the loan rate for many other types of borrowing, which is absurd to begin with. They will have to pay it back, become consumers in our society, start a family, and plan for the future. They are losing good pensioned jobs, going to work in a safe environment, as best as can be legislated, getting a return so they could actually raise a family and continue that contribution into the economic field for all Canadians.
Now we have given up on that dream, despite that investment by those students and those going through our educational system, despite the fact that they are going to pay for it not only while they are in school, but getting out of school for a number of years. It will delay decisions that they make about having children, buying homes, being able to participate in the economy and buying a car, hopefully built in Windsor. Nonetheless, all those things are going to be delayed because people are under a greater cloud of debt.
On top of that, which is also a horrible situation, think about how much taxpayers' money we are investing under Canada student loans and the provinces are doing so to actually put that forth to get people and meanwhile, what we are doing is a classic move in football. When a running back is in trouble, he does a stiff arm, because it protects himself and pushes away using the head of a player coming in. This is equivalent to the Liberal policy right now.
After all that investment, after all that technological development, and I would be remiss to not talk about how the aerospace industry in particular has benefited from tax SR and ED investments. These are corporate subsidized initiatives to help manufacturing and development of products in the aerospace industry. It has been one of the largest organizations to receive these types of tax breaks. Tax breaks that come from individuals who live on Parent Street, on Ottawa Street, on First Street, on Main Street, on a number of different streets all across our country. We have invested collectively to have a value-added job at the end of the day to continue the chain of progress for workers. That is where we are lost in this debate. The chain of progress for workers is broken and we now will reap the so-called rewards of, well, we will see what happens.
That is no way to negotiate. That is no way to play poker. That is no way to do anything in life in the sense that if we win or gain something through giving something, it is called negotiation. It is fair negotiations that brought Air Canada to the point it is today. The reality is that these workers have missed opportunities and missed jobs that affect communities.
We are fortunate in Windsor to have new auto hiring, despite the fact that there was no government support whatsoever because of broken policies of the past that never worked. We have over 1,000 workers back in the auto chain despite us not having a national auto strategy and basically they were fed up and moved ahead with Fiat, Chrysler, and Unifor. That injection moved the unemployment rate that led the nation for 10 years to now down to 6% or 7%. We are happy about that. We are happy that worked, but it came almost at the end of the line.
There was investment in the past for that by the public. The government actually made money back in the day for that, but we now have a surge in value-added jobs in Windsor at the moment thanks to those organizations and those workers. Losing these types of jobs can make the difference between a rebound for a community and the distance of where we go.
I want to conclude by saying we have to be very clear about the precedents that we set here. The precedent is that we can reach back in time and grasp defeat out of the jaws of victory for Canadian taxpayers. That is truly unfortunate for the youth of our nation.