Employment  Mr. Speaker, these are the facts. This government has presided over repeated rounds of job losses and factory closures: we need only think of White Birch Papers, Mabe Canada, AstraZeneca and Electro-Motive. Families suffer with every closure. This government's policies have led to job losses, record levels of family debt and a 2% reduction in real wages in the past year.

Employment  Mr. Speaker, let us talk about economic growth. Let us look at the figures from the OECD and its economic growth projections for 2012 for industrialized countries. Canada ranks 14th. It gets worse. When we look at the IMF data, economic growth projections for 2012 for all countries, Canada is 152nd, behind Bulgaria and behind Benin.

Employment  Mr. Speaker, we cannot protect future generations by taking away their retirement security. There is no leadership here. Even in London, Ontario, labour, businesses and citizens are showing leadership where the government has failed. Mark's Work Wearhouse is giving Caterpillar the boot at their stores.

Employment  Mr. Speaker, in the long term Canadian families are going to be a lot worse off under the government. Conservatives gave Caterpillar $5 million. Now the Prime Minister was willing to use the workers as an election prop for his photo op. Now that those same workers are out on the sidewalk, he just drives right by in his limousine.

Pensions  Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development tried to justify spending $30 billion on jet fighter planes by saying that they were needed against foreign invasions. No foreign powers will invade us to scoop our pension system because there will not be much of it left if the Conservatives have their way.

Pensions  Mr. Speaker, this year the Conservatives handed out $3 billion in tax gifts to profitable large corporations. What could we do with $3 billion? We could pay old age security benefits for 462,000 Canadians. That is a lot of people. There is enough money for tax gifts for large corporations, but now seniors will have to wait until the age of 67 to get their $540 a month?

Pensions  Mr. Speaker, Canadians are not mistaken. They know that if they are 40, 50 or 60, this government wants to attack their pensions. At the same time, the Conservatives are providing the oil and gas industries with $2 billion in subsidies a year. That is equivalent to old age security cheques for 308,000 Canadians for a year.

Pensions  Mr. Speaker, Canadian are paying their taxes, living by the rules, banking on old age security when they retire and Conservatives are plotting to change the rules. In 2032, the percentage of GDP devoted to OAS will actually be declining, and yet Conservatives are trying to manufacture a crisis so they can cut benefits to seniors in the future.

Pensions  Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are attacking the $540 that seniors are able to receive each month through old age security. This is a bad decision. The Prime Minister appointed 47 senators to the upper house, each of whom will receive a generous retirement pension. That money represents old age security benefits for an additional 14,000 seniors.

Pensions  Mr. Speaker, the future is by forcing seniors to work to age 67 and that will take $30,000 away from low-income seniors. The government has a choice. A single F-35 costs $450 million. That would pay OAS benefits for 70,000 Canadian seniors. Its prison plan costs $19 billion. That would pay annual benefits for 2.9 million Canadians seniors.

Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act  Mr. Speaker, this is a sad day in the House of Commons, because it is the 14th time that the government has invoked closure. Fourteen times. As a result, the voices of ordinary people from across Canada are not being heard in the House of Commons. As we know, the government even invoked closure after 14 minutes of debate in one instance.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition on behalf of hundreds of residents of British Columbia including throughout the Lower Mainland, and residents of the Edmonton and Calgary areas of Alberta. The petitioners ask the government to look at waiving visa requirements for Serbian visitors to Canada.

Leif Erikson Day Act  moved for leave to introduce Bill C-387, An Act to establish Leif Erikson Day. Mr. Speaker, as is well known, Canada has been greatly enriched by the contributions of Canadians who have come from Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. They have settled across the country and have helped to build the Canada we know today.

Government Programs  Mr. Speaker, if this continues, it will be Goodbye, Charlie Brown, that is for sure, because this government cares more about CEOs than it does about seniors and families. It has given the gift of additional generous tax cuts to large corporations, which are already raking in huge amounts of money.

Government Programs  Mr. Speaker, the minister is saying that they will do to pensions what they did to Service Canada. The government is choosing to spend billions on a misguided prison agenda and tax giveaways to profitable corporations while planning to cut billions from old age security and the services Canadians rely on at the same time as a quarter of a million seniors in Canada live in poverty and hundreds of thousands of Canadian families are out of work and struggle just to get by.