Finance committee  There has been some chatter in the media about Bombardier being bailed out, but strictly speaking, it would be an investment. It would be shuffling assets on the left side of the government's balance sheet away from cash towards shares. That would be the only thing I would like t

Finance committee  Good afternoon. On behalf of Unifor's 310,000 members, I would like to thank the committee for allowing us to share our views with you here today. You can find the details of our submission in the document of August 5. The industries where Unifor's members work are essential to

Natural Resources committee  Thanks for the question. The difficulty is that governments structure markets. If you want a different set of outcomes, you need to restructure markets. This is not an easy thing to do. It's obviously very controversial. The idea that we're just going to let the free market rip

Natural Resources committee  Thanks for the question. No, it wouldn't. We're trying to develop an energy policy. It wouldn't be a study. That is an interesting question, what the spinoff jobs would be, and then increasing the density of the industry in eastern Canada. Historically, Unifor and our predecess

Natural Resources committee  Sure. I don't know if I said that pipelines were being blocked; I meant opposition to pipelines. There's good reason for that. I wasn't trying to denigrate that. This fact isn't well known enough, though, which is that it didn't actually stop the shipment of oil. It just moved t

Natural Resources committee  I wish I had a great blueprint for you to include. I don't know. Unifor doesn't have a.... We're not in the business of government. We would like to play a constructive role in that, but we're still a relatively new union, and I'm new to this file. I'm still trying to wrap my hea

Natural Resources committee  With respect to the oil and gas industry, anything to reduce the overall emissions level, and the intensity level as well, will help. For one, right now we're burning coal to get bitumen out of the ground in northern Alberta. Why aren't we using our hydroelectric resources right

Natural Resources committee  I don't have a deep understanding of it, but Unifor's position is that aboriginal treaty rights will necessitate a new approach to energy development that would include consultation and full socio-economic participation. As a side note, I mean this is just like a footnote with m

Natural Resources committee  I don't know what it means. Jeffrey Simpson wrote about it in The Globe and Mail this week. I don't think anyone at this point knows what it means.

Natural Resources committee  I don't know the business case for it, but the energy companies seem to be saying we need to get this product out and pipelines are being blocked, so it's being shipped by rail. Why not upgrade it and refine it here in Canada? Right now we need to ship it out because we simply la

Natural Resources committee  On behalf of Unifor, I want to thank the standing committee for allowing me to speak to you today. Unifor is Canada's largest private sector labour union. We have over 310,000 members in 36 or so industries. We have 13,000 in oil and gas, all the way upstream in the extractive p