Well, Mr. Chair, it is said that when one is in a hole, the first thing one should do is stop digging. We did not just wake up today with this kind of vulnerability in the auto sector. This is the result of policy failures by successive Liberal and Conservative governments over several decades. I was talking to a colleague earlier, from the Conservative Party, who told me that he remembers when there were tens of thousands of workers in Ontario running three shifts in a row, 24 hours a day, producing massive numbers of vehicles, and now there are hundreds of them who are walking into empty factories. That did not just happen.
What we need is a reinvigorated, robust commitment to investing in Canada. We have to stop doing what we have done for the last 40 years, which is simply to try to integrate our economy more deeply into the American one. We have to have faith in our own country. Let us invest here. Let us build our vehicles here. Let us export to other countries in the world, and let us reduce our dependency on the United States.
There will be some economic pain and adjustment to that, absolutely, but what have we learned in the last several years? We have learned that the Americans are no longer a trustworthy partner. The Prime Minister says that himself. We would be foolhardy to continue to try to repair a damaged relationship. Let us bet on Canada. Let us get more self-sufficient, build the vehicles of the future here and export them all over the world.