Producing Canadian passports offshore 'a national embarrassment'

OTTAWA, Oct. 24, 2012 /CNW/ - The union representing workers who produce the covers for Canadian passports is calling on the Harper government to reverse a decision to send their jobs offshore, calling the action "a national embarrassment."

Dave Coles, National President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union says "all Canadians should be embarrassed" at the government's latest cost-cutting scheme:  shipping the production of Canadian passport covers to the Netherlands.

The Columbia Finishing Mills facility in Cornwall, Ontario, has been embossing and cutting the covers of Canadian Passports for some 30 years, but will now lose this work because Canada Bank Note has awarded the contract to a company in the Netherlands.

"This is a small example of a very big problem," says Coles:  "The Harper government does not care about keeping jobs here in Canada. Examples abound in the manufacturing sector where it has repeatedly allowed foreign companies to take away Canadian jobs.

"Our members at Local 1156 have done this work in a cost-efficient way for decades. There is no evidence of any potential savings by having it performed half-way across the world.

"Canadians see their passport as the symbol of their national identity.  It's quite telling that our own government is shipping its production offshore and throwing Canadian workers out of a job. "

CEP is the largest union in several key sectors of the economy, including forestry, energy, communications and media.

SOURCE: COMMUNICATIONS, ENERGY AND PAPERWORKERS UNION OF CANADA

Dave Coles [phone]