Madam Speaker, I find it so ironic that the member throws in the Auto Pact. The Auto Pact was a very strong piece of public policy, and it was traded away by Conservatives and Liberals. In terms of the NAFTA negotiations, when we look at what was done for the auto sector, we have become, basically, a branch plant client economy of the United States. That never happened when we were 15 million and 20 million people, back in the 1960s and 1970s, and fighting for an auto sector. The government gave that up.
On the situation in Oshawa, certainly, when we see that many job losses, it is incumbent upon all of us to come together to do something more than Doug Ford's ridiculous, “Oh well, they're leaving. Too bad, so sad.” That is a failure of leadership. We all have an obligation to fight for jobs.
However, if we are going to look at the failure of what happened with GM and Chrysler, we go back to the fact that the government let them walk away on money that was owed. There were no commitments that were called upon. We paid $14 billion into an industry that, as soon as it was making record profits again, walked on us. What kind of suckers are we as a nation? Do we have “doormat” written on our foreheads to give that kind of money to any kind of industry without some level of coherent national strategy?
For years and years, one thing the New Democrats have called for is a coherent auto strategy. We have had none of that, and this is the result.