Madam Speaker, I last rose in this place to urge the government to act on behalf of Unifor members at GM Oshawa, who now know that the Liberal government has turned its back on them.
The GM plant closure is devastating for the families of 2,500 workers and for thousands more whose livelihoods have depended on that plant in Oshawa for over 100 years. The Liberals have yet to act. There was no plan, no emergency meetings, and the Prime Minister still has not even been to Oshawa, where the layoff notices are coming and people are very uncertain of their future.
Canadians deserve a government that is working hard for them. Meeting with auto workers in Oshawa should be at the most basic level of engagement, which the Liberal government has completely failed to do.
What is the Prime Minister waiting for? It has been months since the announcement. These workers are fighting for their jobs, along with Unifor, looking for alternatives for the plant that they have in Oshawa and something that can keep some of them working and with their families.
It is clear that it will not be a solution that keeps GM in Canada, and the reason is that the Liberal government simply refuses to get GM to the table to talk about what it will take for them to reinvest in Canada and in Oshawa.
This is critical. This will impact not just the community of Oshawa but the entire auto ecosystem across the country and certainly across southwestern Ontario.
For far too long, Conservative and Liberal governments have taken the auto sector, its companies and our auto workers for granted. The auto sector produces 40% of all Canadian exports. That is a huge portion of what we are exporting. It is also a significant amount of all the research and development that Canada does, and it employs tens of thousands of highly skilled, well-paid workers in high-tech manufacturing, while supplying billions in taxes to support public services like health care and education.
This industry built the Canadian middle class. The blue-collar workers and auto workers of our country have been the backbone of the middle class. This is the crown jewel of our economy, not just in Windsor-Essex but across the country. To be quite honest, it is what every other country wants and what they are trying to steal away.
I visited Malaysia with the trade committee last year around the CPTPP. Ten years ago, Malaysia had no auto industry whatsoever, but it has gone above and beyond to attract and create an entire auto sector that is getting them away from their traditional sectors, so to say that somehow auto jobs are being replaced by robots or technology or processes is completely and utterly false. I think the government should be focusing on how we can keep these jobs here in Canada.
Over the last 10 years, in North America alone, Canada received only 7% of the auto investment that was made versus Mexico, which got 20%, and the U.S. received 73%. Those numbers alone tell us that we are not doing enough. Certainly the Liberal government has no auto policy and no auto strategy. When we lost the Auto Pact, the Conservatives, and now the Liberals, did nothing to try to support auto workers.
Therefore, my question is this: Will the Liberals finally stand up for auto workers in a meaningful way and go to Oshawa and try to attract investment in our country?