44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 30, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to stand in this place and speak to legislation and, in this particular case, it is an honour to speak to the report stage of Bill C-34.
Before I begin, having just spent the weekend back in my riding and arriving this morning back in Ottawa, at different events and in lots of interaction with my constituents, since we are speaking about competition, I cannot say enough about the impact of the Prime Minister's decision last Thursday to limit the carbon tax, or actually take away the carbon tax, on home heating oil within Atlantic Canada and how much of an impact that is having on the residents whom I represent in Barrie—Innisfil, in a negative way. Many are questioning and wondering why the same application of an exemption to the carbon tax was not applied equally across the country.
I know the Prime Minister gave his rationale, but that is literally cold comfort to the people whom I represent, especially the seniors who are struggling to pay for groceries and to pay their natural gas bills. Many of them are sending me their natural gas bill, and the carbon price is oftentimes equal to the distribution charge of natural gas itself. There are families who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, moms who are worried about paying the bills on a daily basis and, of course, single-parent families who are just struggling to make ends meet, buy nutritious food for their families and pay their gas bills, especially with winter coming up. It was quite the topic of conversation this week within my riding.
Quite frankly, I did not have an answer for any of them because the Prime Minister's decision was to exclude solely Atlantic Canada when the rest of us are still paying the carbon tax for home heating in particular, and those prices are going to go up. The cost of distribution is going to go up and the cost of the carbon tax is going to go up. People in the riding I represent are quite concerned about the inequity of not having the same benefit other Canadians have. I wanted to share that message because it is something I heard on the weekend in my many interactions with the people whom I represent in my riding of Barrie—Innisfil.
We are here today to speak to Bill C-34 at report stage with respect to the improvements, and some needed improvements, to the Investment Canada Act. It is important because we just finished, at the ethics committee, a study on foreign interference and the role that nations, particularly China and Russia, are playing as state-owned actors making investments into our economy for the purpose, quite frankly, of control, including controlling Canadian businesses, controlling Canadian minerals, controlling Canadian resources and controlling, in many cases as the hon. member just spoke about, some of our northern and offshore areas as well. Therefore, it becomes critically important for the government to keep a keen eye, and multiple eyes, in fact, on what is happening with foreign investment and the approvals.
Bill C-34 highlights a few simple things. Number one, there are numerous foreign state-owned enterprises who have acquired interest and control in many Canadian companies, intellectual property, tangible assets and the data of our citizens. We are finding more and more that this access to data and theft of data are not just to use it for nefarious reasons but to propagate disinformation and misinformation to create societal chaos, so we have to be mindful of that. The government, quite frankly, would do very little to protect our national economic and security interests with this bill, despite what we are hearing the Liberals say today and other days during debate, and certainly at committee.
We have to take sensitive transactions seriously, and we have failed to fully review some of the transactions, particularly as they relate to Chinese state-owned enterprises in the past. Later, I am going to be citing some examples of where we have put at risk not just Canadian intellectual property but also Canadians in general.
One can agree with some of the principles of this bill, and we certainly agree with some of the principles, but it does not go far enough to address some of the risks faced by Canadians. That is why we worked to pass significant amendments in committee to better protect Canadian interests and Canadian assets.
When I look through the list of amendments that were proposed for Bill C-34, only four were passed at committee out of the roughly 13 we proposed. One that was accepted was on reducing the threshold to trigger a national security review from $512 million to zero dollars for all state-owned enterprise investment made in Canada. Lowering that threshold was critical so that at least it would trigger and initiate a security review.
The other amendment that was passed would ensure that items renewable under the national security review process include acquisitions of any assets by a state-owned enterprise. Again, this is all about protecting Canadians and protecting our valuable assets, our businesses and certainly our interests.
The other one would ensure that an automatic national security review is conducted whenever a company has previously been convicted of corruption charges. If somebody had not supported that, I would have been surprised, quite frankly. It is one of the proposals at committee that were adopted.
The last would require the minister to conduct a national security review by changing the word “may” to “shall” to ensure a review is triggered whenever it is in the new threshold. This was quite frankly a no-brainer.
However, there were some amendments proposed that were not accepted at committee and rejected. The one that concerns me the most is the one that would require the minister to conduct a national security review by changing “may” to “shall” to ensure the review is triggered whenever in the review threshold.
One of the things we have to be mindful of is that anytime a transaction being proposed impacts the national security interests of our country, we have to make sure there is a review. One of the proposed amendments was to have a Governor in Council review of this so there is not just one eye on it, the minister's eye. It would go to the cabinet table so there are multiple eyes on it and multiple questions being asked, which is critical when we are dealing with sensitive national security interests.
Why is this important? As I said earlier, there have been situations in the past where companies have not had the type of review they should have. That has been widely publicized. A Chinese takeover deal in 2015 had been previously rejected by the Conservative government, but it was approved in 2015. This was based on Hong Kong O-Net Technologies Group as it related to a business here. Having multiple eyes on the review therefore becomes critical.
In fact, three years ago, a Deloitte study suggested to the government that we should not buy sensitive security IT from despotic regimes. That was in relation to a $6.8-million contract to supply security equipment to Canada's embassies. This was Nuctech, which is known as the Huawei of airport security. Some may recall that this involved X-ray machines being supplied for use by the Government of Canada.
While there are some things to support in this bill, the amendments that were proposed by our Conservative colleagues in committee were reasonable and practicable and should have been applied to many aspects of the bill we are debating today.
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Madam Speaker, I believe that all Canadian interests should be protected, including those of indigenous communities.
As I said earlier, the national security interests of this country become paramount as we debate bills like this. As Canadians, as stewards of our land, protecting northern resources and northern offshore resources becomes critical. If we are going to be serious about the protection of our national interests as they relate to foreign investment, there should be a fulsome discussion around the cabinet table to discuss all aspects of that. This would include the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations as well, because there are certain things that this minister could bring to the table. Let us not just leave it with one minister.
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Madam Speaker, it is strategically important that we look at this bill, because we have seen strategic investment drop by almost 20% in this country. We have to ask ourselves why. We have also seen, for example, that in the United States, the investment increases have been the reverse of that.
There is no doubt that we have to look at the strategic investments. We have to look at the impact of what is going on as it relates to foreign investment. We have to understand why we have seen a decrease in foreign investment.
There was a reaction on the other side. Foreign investment should not be confused with government investment. We have seen a significant amount of government investment over the last little while, some of which is questionable, but with foreign investment, we need to have a national security review and all eyes need to be on it.
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Madam Speaker, I am a Quebecker; I was born in Montreal. It should come as no surprise to the hon. member that my interests lie in the economic levers of the country, and that would include Quebec. It would also include northern areas of our country and offshore resources, those that are critical to the sustainability of our country. I am interested in all of Canada, not just one part of it.
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- Oct/30/23 2:53:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, an obvious, desperate Prime Minister admitted his carbon tax is punishing Canadians and making life unaffordable. After eight years he finally proved to himself last Thursday that he is not worth the cost. His only strategy at this point is not about climate. It is about protecting his Liberal MPs. In Sudbury, in Nickel Belt, 55% of homes are heated by natural gas, yet for these struggling Canadians they get no exemption from heating their homes.
The Leader of the Opposition has proposed to axe the tax in all forms of home heating for every Canadian. Will the Prime Minister agree with that?
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