Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the member for London—Fanshawe certainly knows the heritage of the old GM Defense company in London as well.
The issue of 2009 brings up a great question. There was going to be insolvency affecting not only hundreds of thousands of jobs but all the retirees. I remind my friend from Hamilton Mountain that he can still vote for Bill C-405, which came out of concerns from General Motors' pensioners about less flexibility. They were worried that all pensioners would be left out.
We do not have insolvency here. I spoke to Mark Cameron, who was in the Prime Minister's Office at the time. The requirement to produce 16% was the result of the negotiation. At the time of the bailout, 16% was how much was being produced in Canada. As part of Canadian participation and the Province of Ontario, GM maintained that. That was the longest time period for vehicle cycles, going out several, that could be agreed to, and I would remind the member that it was done on an urgent basis to prevent a massive failure.
I think Parliament has acted before to address the shock from the great global recession. Now is a time to address the signal being sent that our manufacturing environment in Ontario has some underlying competitiveness issues. The mini-budget released a few days ago by the finance minister is not enough to address some of the concerns that have been there since payroll tax increases and others. Let us use this debate tonight to come up with a plan to address some of these underlying competitiveness issues.