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House Hansard - 242

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 30, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 242 - Oct/30/23
Mr. Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West, CPC)
  • Oct/30/23 1:50:50 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-34 
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to talk on the update to Bill C-34, an act to amend the Investment Canada Act. When it comes to business investment, it is clear that, after eight years under the Prime Minister and the Liberals, the government is not worth the cost. Since coming into power, business investment per employee in Canada has actually dropped 20%. At the same time, business investment per employee in the U.S. has actually increased 14%. It puts things into perspective in terms of Canada's dropping productivity and, as we go forward, the fear of declining prosperity in our country. What is more shocking is that, in the very final year of the Harper government, Canada's business investment, as a percentage of GDP, was actually higher than that of the U.S. After eight years of the government, we are at about 15% lower. According to the National Bank of Canada, for the first time ever, business investment is now lower in this country than housing investment is. We can think about all the manufacturing, oil production and everything else. The investment is actually lower than it is in housing. Manufacturing capital stock is the lowest that we have had since 1988. Two-thirds of our 15 main industries experienced declines in business investments under the government, including wholesale trade, accommodation and food services, utilities, professional services and manufacturing. All these numbers fell prepandemic; this is not because of the pandemic. The Business Council of B.C. has issued a report on investment in Canada, calling it “Stuck in the slow lane”. What better title is there for what is going on right now with investment in our country than being stuck in the slow lane? The report noted that, out of 38 members in the OECD, Canada is going to have the slowest economic growth over the next decades. We will have the lowest real GDP per capita growth in the OECD going forward. That has been brought up, I think, in previous speeches about Bill C-34 in this House. The report lists several reasons for this, among them, inefficient regulatory approvals. Does anyone remember Bill C-69? Of course, we have seen Bill C-69 ruled against by the Supreme Court. Hopefully, the government will recognize what the Supreme Court has said and eliminate Bill C-69; however, Bill C-69 was only one of many regulatory burdens added by the government that has chased away business investment in this country. The Business Council of B.C. also noted punitive tax rates as companies grow; lack of relief for energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries under the carbon tax regime; and high internal trade restrictions. Something also noted in this report is that our anemic business investment would be all the worse if it backed Alberta out. Alberta has the highest per capita investment in the entire country. If we back out Alberta, our numbers are even worse. What do we get with the government? Every possible regulatory move, every possible attempt to strangle the growth in Alberta. Therefore, we have one province driving most of the business investment in this country, and the government is trying to destroy it. There will be some members across the way, such as, perhaps, the member for Winnipeg North, who will get up to ask this: Are there not some things the government has done? Would we not agree that it is good? There are some things the government has done to spur business investment in Canada, such as green-lighting the purchase of ITF Technologies by a China-based company. This was a deal that the Harper Conservatives had kiboshed. The Liberals reversed it and allowed a China-based company to buy out ITF Technologies. ITF has done national security work with National Defence, and the government overrode the ban on a purchase by a China-based company. We should remember that China's national intelligence law of 2017 requires companies to “support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence work”. I will read that part again. It says Chinese companies “shall support, assist and co-operate with state intelligence work”, and we have the government approving the sale of a technology company that has done work for National Defence. It waived the security review of the Chinese takeover of Vancouver's Norsat, despite Norsat being involved in communication tech for Public Safety Canada, the defence department and the Coast Guard. Norsat had also done work for the Pentagon. The U.S. and our Five Eyes allies asked us not to allow the sale to go through, but it did. When not allowing the sale of sensitive tech companies, the Liberals are going out of their way to bring Chinese regime companies into our security systems, such as Nuctech, which my colleague from Barrie—Innisfil talked about. Nuctech is called the Huawei of scanners. It is a Chinese-based company partially owned by the Chinese state. It has been fined, charged and convicted around the world over various fraud, regulatory and spying issues, and the government went out of its way to give it a contract to bring its technology into every embassy we have around the country. The CBSA, which is meant to protect us, for some reason basically jury-rigged the RFP to ensure that only Nuctech, ahead of two Canadian companies, one in Quebec and one in Calgary, got the contract. It wrote in the requirements the exact specifications of a type of scanner, down to exactly how many inches across and how many inches high, and guess what. Only one company in all of the world happened to have a scanner that was 33 inches across and 21 inches high: Nuctech. Oddly enough, PSPC warned the government not to buy it, and the CBSA went ahead anyway. When this was exposed, the government said it would hire an outside consulting company to do a review. Apparently, McKinsey was not available at the time, so it hired Deloitte, and for a quarter of a million dollars, Deloitte did what had been done at the mighty OGGO. Of course, I cannot make a speech without mentioning the operations and estimates committee. Deloitte exposed the fallacy of buying equipment from Chinese security companies. For a quarter of a million dollars, it came out with a four-page report that basically said Canada should not buy sensitive IT technology from despotic regimes. I went to the West Edmonton Mall that week with the report and randomly asked kids and adults, strangers, about this, and they all laughed. Not one person said we should buy sensitive technology from despotic regimes. I appreciate that the government is finally getting around to updating the issue with Bill C-34, but one major change the Conservatives would like to see is taking away the ability of a minister to make the final decision. We would like to see a minister bring it to cabinet so that cabinet is consulted. For an issue as important as our state security, too much power is left with the minister. The minister should be required to bring the purchase of a sensitive company elsewhere. Whether it is a mining company or a tech company, it should not be the role of the minister to decide. We have seen the government repeatedly bring bills to the House that would give ministerial power over such a thing, and we would like to see that change. There were a couple of other amendments we brought up that were shut down, and I would like the government to reconsider them. One of them would modify the definition of a state-owned enterprise to include any company or entity headquartered in an authoritarian state. This goes back to my previous comment about the Chinese intelligence law that forces those companies to act and assist in concert with that regime. I will just briefly bring up a couple of other amendments that we would like to see. One is listing specific sectors necessary to preserve our national security rather than a systematic approach. Another is exempting non-Canadian Five Eyes intelligence state-owned enterprises from the security review.
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