Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very articulate speech in which he criticized the inappropriate comments that some Conservatives allegedly made about the national school food program.
I would like him to know that, when Paccar, a truck manufacturing company in Sainte-Thérèse in my region, recently laid off 300 people, his Liberal colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville told these workers on Mario Dumont's show to seek help from food banks and other organizations if they needed to get back on their feet and, above all, to not to take their job loss personally. She offered no solutions, and the government provided no assistance to these workers. These comments by the member for Thérèse-De Blainville were heard by tens of thousands of people in the region.
I challenge my colleague to tell me whether he thinks it is appropriate to tell 300 workers not to take their layoff personally and to go to food banks to get something to eat. I would also ask him, in passing, if it is not high time the government implemented a permanent reform of the employment insurance system.