Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to finally rise in the House of Commons to speak to Bill C-50, after eight months of dealing with the bill in committee. I can tell the House that I have never seen such antics being played out by any opposition party on any legislation in my entire life as I have with the Conservatives on the sustainable jobs act, a bill that would do so much to help transition workers in this country at a time when they need it.
One would think that the Conservatives want no Canadians to have opportunities, nor for this country to be a leader in clean energy at home and around the world. We have potential here that very few countries have, which is to be able to develop a clean energy transition and a country that is allowing itself to provide for sustainable jobs today and into the future.
The member opposite talked about the cod moratorium. I lived through the cod moratorium; in fact, I was an employment counsellor who worked with people displaced in the fishing industry. One of the major setbacks was that there was no transition in jobs at that time. There was no plan by the Government of Canada, Progressive Conservative government, to help the thousands of people, including the 20,000 families in my own province, who were affected by the moratorium. They were left to their own devices. They were left to figure out where the next job was going to come from, where the next field of training was going to come from, their next career, and how they were going to feed their families.
Is that what the Conservatives are saying, that we should just let it happen in Canada, let everyone just figure this out and fend for themselves? I do not support that concept, because I have lived through it already once in my life. Let me tell the House this: In the absence of a transition plan for employment opportunities for workers in this country, many will fall through the cracks.
As for every labour union that came before the committee over the course of those months, as the member for Timmins—James Bay said best today, there were representatives of at least six unions who sat before us in the committee, where Conservative members did not allow them to present or speak, nor for the committee to question them.
Conservative members used every possible tactic they could, including bringing in 20,000 amendments to the bill, an 11-page bill, most of it containing standard clauses. The 20,000 amendments were generated not by the intelligence of Canadians but by AI, from a robotic system. That will tell us how connected they are to Canadians who are asking for the legislation and the transition to sustainable jobs.
The Conservatives know it well. They did not even take the time to actually do the research themselves to come up with amendments that would help strengthen the legislation, the opportunity for Canadians and the opportunities for workers. No, they pushed a few buttons on a computer and generated 20,000 amendments so they could stall the bill altogether at the committee stage. That will give us the level of intellect, interest and responsibility that they take—