44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 6, 2023 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives put forth several amendments, two of which were rejected. One would have required the minister to conduct a national review by changing “may” to “shall” to ensure a review is triggered whenever the review threshold is met. The other would have made the act retroactive.
How does the minister expect the government to ensure our national security is in place if we cannot go back to see which companies got in under the wire and may be doing Canadian companies harm?
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Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the member's speech. Perhaps he could explain further the extent to which the government has failed to take Canada's national security seriously and necessitated this. The review is long overdue and the threat environment has changed, but this bill, if passed, would in some ways force the government to do things that it ought to have had enough sense to do in the first place.
Could the member comment?
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Madam Speaker, the member spoke about some of our allies. He spoke about Australia and the U.K. and how they are moving toward our system of examination of these matters on an international basis.
Does he have any information whether those two very important allies actually have a process where one minister determines whether one gets past a security review in those countries? Frankly, that is the worst part of this bill. Can he comment on that, please?
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Madam Speaker, yes, my hon. colleague has rightly emphasized that our regime, as a general rule, has thresholds in place that allow us to screen investments coming in. In other instances, it is sectoral because there are various sectors of the economy that are vulnerable to falling into the wrong hands, if you will.
These have been ongoing changes. I made reference to changes that we made in 2021 and 2022. This does not mean that if we bring in some of these new provisions, they are necessarily replacing all of the old safeguards that were there previously.
Our intention has always been to have the gold standard when it comes to screening investments coming in. This will ensure that we will continue to lead the way in having a good, robust system in place, which does evolve as security threats around the world evolve.
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Madam Speaker, I want to ask my colleague a question on a point she just made with regard to cabinet's having authority over the movement of this type of development in our trade security systems. Can she elaborate on her thoughts regarding why that is so important?
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Madam Speaker, at the committee stage of this bill, the Conservatives introduced an amendment that would have required any major investment from a state-owned enterprise outside the Five Eyes to be considered a national security risk. My riding and a few other Quebec ridings are home to the aerospace industry. An investment from Airbus, a French-German state-owned enterprise, would have been automatically considered a threat to national security. That amendment could have posed a serious threat to major investments in Quebec, major investments in the aerospace industry and major investments in my riding.
I would like to know whether my colleague still agrees that such investments, in my riding and in our aerospace sector, should be automatically considered a threat to national security.
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Madam Speaker, that is an important question since, indeed, when we talk about national security and the security of companies that might be acquired or that have a national security interest, it is vital that we ensure that the process is done properly.
Unfortunately, several of the amendments we proposed were rejected. They would have enhanced the quality of the work that the government in place should have done to ensure that we do not get taken for a ride, which is what happened in several cases where the minister approved acquisitions in Canada that never should have happened.
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Uqaqtittiji, understanding that in deciding to invest in Canada, there has to be a balance between what will generate prosperity in Canada and protecting national security, I wonder whether the member can comment on whether she thinks this bill would balance more toward the prosperity of Canada or more toward national security.
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Madam Speaker, it was foreign interference. We are talking about national security and, of course, we know that we have had foreign interference in our democratic institutions right here. It all ties in together very well.
I will continue with how critical supply chains are. Although we may not be able to produce all things right here in Canada, we should be producing them at least within our Five Eyes, where we know there are the same security controls and concerns that we have here in Canada. Thus, we can ensure that we have control of things that are important for building defence infrastructure and national security infrastructure, as well as providing security and public safety for Canadians at large. Again, we fail to see that recognized to any great degree.
All we have to do is look at the recent record of the Liberal government when it comes to foreign companies owning businesses here that have engaged in espionage and continue to raise major security issues. We can also look at what is happening in our universities and what happened at the Winnipeg labs, where the government allowed and gave work visas to people who were doing research on behalf of the People's Liberation Army. That is the Communist Party of China's military organization. Scientists from the PLA were put into our universities and the Winnipeg labs; they got information on all sorts of intel and then were able to take that back to mainland China.
We have already talked about Sinclair Technologies, which provides a lot of the security screening equipment that we see at our embassies and that is used by the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency and our airports. That company was bought up by Hytera, but the government continued to award contracts to Sinclair Technologies, which was now under the control of Beijing.
No one can forget about Huawei and the way the Liberals dithered, delayed and dragged their feet, kicking and screaming, until they finally banned Huawei from our 5G network here in Canada. This was after the United States raised red flags and banned it from its 5G network, as well as after Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom did so. Our Five Eyes partners stepped up and said, “We are banning Huawei, why aren't you?” However, there was no good answer coming from the government. It took another 24 months before finally making the decision to ban Huawei, which had incredible switches and back doors linking intel right into the PRC at its headquarters in Beijing.
We could also talk about TikTok. It is an app that many of our young Canadians are familiar with, and it is used around the world. We banned it from all our devices here in Parliament and in the Government of Canada. However, I know that there is great concern being raised in the United States about this technology, which is still being used by our millennials and by generation X. We know that the PRC's socialist ideology has been instilled in and permeated through TikTok, and it has been promoted and used more and more. We have to take these things seriously, because these state-controlled enterprises are not so much worried about the consumer. They are definitely not worried about our democracy right here in Canada or our allies; they are doing everything they can to undermine it.
I now want to talk about something that is very important to us, which is our critical minerals. We have large deposits of lithium across this country. We have already talked about Neo Lithium, which is now owned by Zijin Mining out of Beijing, and it is hoping to develop those mineral resources here and take them back to China rather than developing them in Canada.
We have Sinomine here, which got access to three large lithium deposits in northwestern Ontario. I will give credit, because the government actually made it divest those resources and sell them back into Canadian control. However, the government still lets Sinomine operate in Canada. If the government is so concerned about Sinomine controlling those lithium deposits in Ontario, why was it not concerned about Sinomine, just in 2019, buying Tanco mines in Manitoba? It also has a mine just outside my riding, headquartered in my riding in Lac du Bonnet, that has lithium and 65% of the world's cesium. It also produces tantalum, which is used in electronics and warheads on nuclear missiles.
All of the ore that they are producing right now in Manitoba is not refined in Manitoba. They ship it out raw, back to mainland China, and none of it ever comes back to Canada. This is something very concerning. The government turned a blind eye in 2019. Rather than looking at lithium and the Tanco mine, which, at that point in time, was U.S.-owned, and saying it wanted to make sure those critical minerals stay within Canadian or at least North American ownership, it allowed a Chinese company to come in here, buy it up and take all those resources straight back to China.
That undermines our overall goal. The Government of Canada has a goal to produce more electric vehicle batteries, and the lithium being produced right now in Canada is actually all going to China, undermining our ability to sustain the critical supply line to the EV battery plants that are being built in Ontario.
I just want to say that we do have a lack of coordination with the government, between its foreign investment plan and its Special Economic Measures Act, SEMA, which sanctions those who are responsible for gross human rights violations and for destabilizing peace and security in the world. We have things that have happened here in Canada. I will use Roman Abramovich as an example. He owned Evraz, the steel mills in western Canada. Again, we have not seen those holdings liquidated and provided to support Ukraine's war effort against the Russian invaders. We know there are Russian hawks out there who own things like Buhler Industries, which also sells out of Russia. Konstantin Babkin, one of the top people there, has been out there supporting Russia and denouncing Ukraine, yet they are still allowed to benefit from Canada's economy and our strong manufacturing industry.
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