Mr. Speaker, in the fall economic statement yesterday, the government projected that, over the next year, unemployment is going to be up by 1% in Canada. I absolutely agree with the member that investments in battery plants have to lead to good union jobs here, although he did not say “good union jobs”. I will give him the opportunity in a moment.
What I am concerned about is that he did not talk about the legislation, and he is using replacement workers in a very different sense than the sense relevant to the legislation. If the Conservatives want to coin a new term, that is their business, but they should not do it to conflate issues and distract from the fact that they clearly do not want to talk about bringing home powerful paycheques for Canadian workers by protecting their right to strike with anti-scab legislation.
Would he now like to take a moment to talk about replacement workers in the relevant sense, who are people who take the job of someone out on strike or in a lockout, and tell us what the Conservative position is on this bill? He has not even talked about the content of the bill yet despite us being almost at the 15-minute mark.