Madam Speaker, I am pleased to engage in the debate for a few moments this morning. First I will thank my colleagues, the mover of this important motion, the member for London—Fanshawe, and the seconder, the member for Beauport—Limoilou. They did a wonderful job introducing this issue in debate today and I thank them very much for their concern. I know their constituents are very thankful that they were elected to this House.
This is a very troubling trend that we have seen in our country. It has been going on now since 2006, for far too many years. Since 2006, we have lost over 400,000 manufacturing jobs in the country. The impact that it has on our economy generally and the effect that is has on the communities in which these jobs were lost is extraordinary.
We heard the member for London--Fanshawe talk about some of her constituents who work at the Caterpillar plant and the impact that it was having. She cited some personal examples of families that were directly affected. She also talked about the United Way organization in her community and how the workers at that facility had raised over $100,000 in support of the United Way, an organization that supports communities and families to keep the wolves away, in large part. They will not now be able to donate the money they were able to raise. That is the kind of impact that these kinds of job losses have on these communities.
Madam Speaker, I was remiss in not saying that I will be sharing my time with the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam. Undoubtedly, he will be able to tell us stories about the kind of impact this is having on his community. I look forward to listening to that.
When the member from London—Fanshawe talked about the impact the shut down and loss of so many hundreds of jobs was having on the constituents in her communities, she also presented legislative solutions to the House that could in fact go some distance to prevent this kind of occurrence in the future. That, frankly, is the difference between us in the official opposition and the government, and, for that matter, the third party. We are engaging in debate here on this issue and on trade issues. We are trying to say to the government and other members of the House that when it comes to negotiating trade, that we need to ensure that in our negotiations we do not sell away important jobs in our communities. If we are going to negotiate a trade deal, we are saying that we must ensure that it is to the benefit of our communities and the workers of the companies and organizations from one end of our country to the other. We must not get carried away with putting pen to paper, signing a deal with whomever simply for the sake of saying that we signed another trade deal with x country, and then see tens of thousands, literally hundreds of thousands, of good jobs lost as a result of those kinds of decisions.
When the Minister of Industry stood in his place today and engaged in this debate, he said that this was a tragedy and that he felt bad for the workers and their families. However, did he offer any concrete solutions? Did he say that his government would introduce changes to the legislation to ensure this does not happen again? Did he say that his government would work with its provincial counterparts to ensure this kind of thing does not happen again? Not once did he offer those kinds of changes.
That is why the constituents in my riding of Dartmouth--Cole Harbour and Canadians from one end of the country to the other are asking whose side the government is on.
Caterpillar, a company that has been making extraordinary profits and has taken tax dollars in this country, has moved its operations to the United States. It made a record profit for 2011 of nearly $5 billion, an 83% increase over its 2010 profit. Caterpillar's CEO earned more than $10 million in 2010. We on this side of the House have been saying that, when it comes down to choices, the government chooses the CEOs who are making $10 million. It chooses the corporations that are making billions of dollars in profits.
That is why the government has continued to lower the corporate income tax rate in this country. It is down now to 15%, which is one of the lowest in the G20. This is resulting in billions of dollars being stashed away in the bank account of very profitable corporations. Are these corporations creating jobs? No. It just the opposite.
Caterpillar is an example of a company that took generous tax breaks and it greased the skids as it was moving the equipment and the jobs away from this country. That is wrong.
The minister said another thing that I find quite troubling. He stood up in this place and accused the member for London—Fanshawe and other members of this caucus of playing cheap politics with this issue when we talk about what a devastating impact this decision is having on working people. He calls that cheap politics. When we stand and offer solutions or when we urge the government to use caution when making decisions, the minister calls that cheap politics.
We have seen the colour photo of the Prime Minister four short years ago hanging out of the window of one of the locomotives at that plant pulling down on the air horn with a big smile on his face. He was talking about how, as a result of the tax breaks that his government was affording that company, he was ensuring there would be secure jobs in this country. We know who was playing cheap politics. The cheapness, the bitterness and the meanness of those politics have resulted in the fact that those jobs are now gone.
In the intervention by the leader of the third party earlier, he castigated the members of the NDP by saying that they were against this and against that. However, what he could not do was answer for the record of the Liberal Party when it was in government for 13 years and allowed this very event to happen time and time again. Foreign companies were coming in and not only taking over our Canadian companies and then laying people off but they were taking our intellectual property, taking patents out of this country and moving them somewhere else to the benefit of another country. The Liberals did not do a thing about it.
What we are doing in this debate is saying that what is happening to working people is wrong. It is wrong that we are losing these important manufacturing jobs in this country. It is affecting our economy and we are proposing solutions. We are prepared, as the official opposition, to work with members of the House and, after 2015 as government, to make the kind of changes that will protect and encourage the development of manufacturing jobs in this country.
