- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Niagara Falls
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 69%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $102,468.80
- Government Page
- Nov/20/23 3:50:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand in this place today to talk about the dissenting report that we have submitted on the underused housing tax on Canadian border communities. While Conservatives were generally pleased with the evidence contained within this report, they firmly believe its recommendations fall way short of what was being asked by concerned stakeholders. The Conservative members also acknowledge that the existing recommendations in the report fail to recognize the federal government's unpreparedness when it comes to implementing the underutilized housing tax. The existing recommendations also fail to prescribe specific changes and tangible solutions that were directly provided to the committee by concerned stakeholders. That is why we have prepared the dissenting report with five additional recommendations.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member's comments. On this side of the House, we are disappointed in the government for bringing forward time allocation.
There are chances to improve this legislation. We put 14 amendments forward, and only four were accepted. We still have concerns that we would like addressed to ensure that this bill is better, better for all Canadians. That should be the priority of everyone in the House.
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Madam Speaker, my understanding is that the amendment we proposed at committee would have allowed for a takeover by any foreign hostile country to be reviewed immediately. That would have been looked at.
It is again the whole notion of removing the mandatory cabinet review on national security issues. Does the member not feel that those members from the Quebec caucus who are members of cabinet should not have the right to review such sensitive information and sensitive matters when those decisions are being made in Canada?
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Madam Speaker, during the whole committee process of reviewing the bill, and this is why we are debating it at report stage, my Conservative colleagues on the committee proposed 14 amendments to improve this legislation, to improve the security and scrutiny that takes place with foreign-controlled enterprises that are looking to take over Canadian companies and the impact it has on workers in this country. Unfortunately, only four of those amendments passed.
Conservatives are looking to create situations where we can improve this legislation. We are hopeful that we can get additional changes made, including the removal of clause 15 to ensure mandatory consultations with cabinet in determining whether an investment is a threat to Canada's national security.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to take part in the debate on Bill C-34, an act to amend the Investment Canada Act. Bill C-34 attempts to update and strengthen the Investment Canada Act through seven significant amendments. Mainly, these changes to the act aim to protect Canada's national security with stricter regulations and higher penalties. Why does the government feel we need this bill? Here is a little background and some timelines.
In the Prime Minister's December 2021 mandate letter to the industry minister, he asked the minister to:
Contribute to broader efforts to promote economic security and combat foreign interference by reviewing and modernizing the Investment Canada Act to strengthen the national security review process and better identify and mitigate economic security threats from foreign investment.
In essence, this bill would give the industry minister more time and authority to assess foreign transactions that might compromise national security by removing the Governor in Council from the initial process while also making penalties more severe for violating the Investment Canada Act.
Why, again, is this bill needed? Well, in 2017, the minister of industry failed to request a full national security review of the acquisition of B.C.-based telecommunications company Norsat International and its subsidiary Sinclair Technologies by China-based Hytera Communications, which is partially owned by the People's Republic of China. In 2020, the Department of Foreign Affairs awarded a contract to China-based Nuctech, founded by the son of a former Chinese Communist Party secretary general, to supply X-ray equipment to 170 of Canada's embassies and consulates.
In response to some of these failures, in March 2021, the industry minister updated and enhanced guidelines for national security reviews for transactions involving critical minerals and state-owned enterprises. However, in January 2022, the same minister failed to follow his own guidelines when he fast-tracked the takeover of Canadian lithium company Neo Lithium Corp. by Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining without a national security review. In November 2022, the minister then ordered three Chinese companies to divest their ownership of three critical mineral firms, but not included was the previously approved acquisition of Neo Lithium. One cannot make this stuff up.
In December 2022, the RCMP awarded a contract to supply sensitive hardware for its communications system to Sinclair Technologies, formerly a Canadian-owned company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Norsat International. Norsat, founded and based in Richmond, B.C., itself was acquired by Hytera Communications. Hytera, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, is partially owned by the People's Republic of China and is a major supplier to China's public security ministry. It was also revealed in December 2022 that in 2017 the Canada Border Services Agency had been using communications equipment and technology from Hytera Communications, which worked with Canadian company Canquest Communications to supply the Hytera equipment.
Hytera has been charged with 21 counts of espionage in the U.S. and banned by President Biden from doing business in the U.S. When and if this bill passes, the government would need to come forward with regulations to identify the prescribed business sectors in which enhanced review processes would take place. These sensitive business sectors would be decided upon through regulation. However, it is expected these sectors would feature aerospace, defence, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, energy generation and medical technology.
After eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, numerous foreign state-owned enterprises have acquired interest and control in many Canadian companies, intellectual property and intangible assets, and the data of our citizens. The government is doing little, too late to protect our national economic and security interests with this bill. Liberals do not take sensitive transactions seriously and have failed to fully review transactions involving Chinese state-owned enterprises, putting the security and material interests of Canadians and the government at risk while Conservatives have continually pressed the government to ensure that appropriate national security reviews are conducted on Chinese state enterprises. While we do agree with the general principle of this bill, we have also flagged issues in which this bill does not go far enough to address the risks faced by Canadians.
That is why at committee, Conservatives found opportunities to strengthen this bill. We actually found 14 opportunities. We put forward 14 amendments aimed at providing a far more rigorous review process of acquisitions and investments involving foreign state-owned enterprises. Unfortunately, the NDP-Liberal government rejected 10 notable Conservative improvements to this legislation, but we still managed to fight hard to get four amendments passed.
The four Conservative amendments that passed accomplished some changes. We reduced the threshold to trigger a national security review for all state-owned enterprises from $512 million in asset value to zero and, for countries not listed as trade agreement investors, we ensured all investments made by state-owned enterprises would be reviewable. We also implemented a requirement for the minister to review any investments or acquisitions made in Canada that exceed $1.9 billion in enterprise value instead of being an option.
These changes would be positive for Canadian industry, Canadian workers and our national interest, but Conservatives still see room for improvement in this bill. We will continue to work to improve Bill C-34 even further by working to delete clause 15, which would remove the mandatory consultations with cabinet in determining whether an investment is a threat to Canada's national security. This change would be problematic, given the number of state-owned enterprises made in Canada over the past eight years that have not undergone a security review as a result of decisions made by past industry ministers.
By removing cabinet from the process, decisions over whether an investment is considered injurious would receive less debate and scrutiny. By removing clause 15 from the bill, the language would revert to the act's current text, thus making all security review decisions reviewable by cabinet and not just by the ministers of industry and public safety.
After eight years of the Liberal government, numerous foreign state-owned enterprises have acquired interest and control in many Canadian companies, intellectual property, intangible assets and the data of our citizens, all under their watch. More needs to be done to protect Canadian interests and Conservatives will continue to work hard to achieve this.
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- Apr/4/22 12:41:17 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak once again to Bill C-8, an act to implement certain provisions of the economic and fiscal update from December, which is now before us at report stage in the House of Commons.
In February, during second reading debate, I questioned the previous Liberal minority government on its leadership in governing our country during these times of crisis. It turns out that since then, the Prime Minister now feels he needs the help of the NDP to retain the confidence of the House. With the support of his NDP coalition partners, this may in fact be true in this place, but my constituents and Canadians across the country had lost faith and confidence in the Prime Minister and the Liberal government a long time ago. A recent public opinion poll conducted by Ipsos found a majority of people, 53%, listed “help with the soaring costs of everyday needs due to inflation” as one of the top three priorities they had. That is quite a departure from the so-called Liberal-NDP ideological “build back better” agenda, which has not made life better for Canadians. In fact, it has only made life harder and more expensive.
In my February speech on Bill C-8,, I asked the government where its plan was to get Canadian lives back to normal after more than two years of Canadians having to endure this pandemic. Two months later, I still do not have an answer. Meanwhile, federal mandates continue to inconveniently plague Canadians and delay them from returning to their normal lives.
Since February, Canada's Conservatives have called on the federal government to lift all federal pandemic restrictions in order to protect the jobs of federally regulated employees, to enable Canadians to travel unimpeded, to ensure Canada's tourism industry recovery and to allow for the free flow of goods across the Canada-U.S. border. However, the NDP and the Liberals have outright rejected our efforts, even in the face of provinces and territories pivoting toward reopening their economies after two long years of government-forced closures and lockdowns.
Since the onset of this pandemic, we have also raised the importance of vaccines and rapid testing, and have called on the government to make these essential tools more readily available for Canadians to use. However, as seen throughout this pandemic, federal leadership has been either delayed or missing. It has taken a back seat to wedge-issue politics, the politics of division and, most recently, the politics of convenience, which we see with this NDP-Liberal coalition that Canadians did not vote for. I would suggest that this is an abdication of leadership not befitting the needs and wants of Canadians.
For instance, over a year ago, the federal government purchased 52 million doses of Novavax. Meanwhile, the details of the $126-million Novavax production plant in Montreal remain in question. On February 17, 2022, I was pleased to see Health Canada finally approve the Novavax vaccine for use. After two years it finally happened. In theory, this vaccine lets Canadians choose a more traditional protein-based vaccine to protect against COVID, as opposed to those who simply do not want an mRNA vaccine. However, as we speak, Novavax is still inaccessible to many Canadians.
Just last week, a constituent contacted me. She is a federally regulated worker who was concerned about losing her job if she continues to be unvaccinated. Despite her vaccine status, she is eager to get vaccinated and wishes to receive the Novavax vaccine. She has contacted local pharmacies and public health in Niagara and Hamilton, but she has had to be placed on a waiting list with no firm timelines for when she will receive Novavax. My constituent is trying her best, and we need the federal government to try harder to make these critical health care tools available to Canadians. It disappoints me greatly that the Prime Minister and his NDP partners are delaying access to critical health care tools that can give all Canadians greater freedoms and choices, especially as they pertain to managing their personal health care and family well-being.
In the limited time I have today, there are two additional issues I want to raise, both of which significantly impact my riding of Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort Erie.
The first major problem is the continued mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app at our Canada-U.S. border crossings. In my riding alone, we have four international bridge border crossings. We rely on these bridges for trade, travel and tourism, and not only in Niagara. They are the gateways to our country's broader economy. The summer of 2022 could be our third straight pandemic summer. The great people of Niagara are hopeful that this summer will be a more normal event than the previous two, but that hope will quickly be dashed if the NDP-Liberal government continues to use this flawed mobile application.
Recently the general manager of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority wrote Niagara MPs and municipal politicians. He noted that, while it is positive that Canada is lifting the COVID testing requirements at the borders as of April 1, their analysis shows that “continued mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app will result in much longer processing times and very lengthy border waits, which will significantly depress cross-border traffic at a time when we are moving into the 2022 summer tourist season.” He further wrote that CBSA had confirmed to him that ArriveCAN will remain mandatory and that there will be no phase-in period to make the vast majority of the travelling public, which is non-essential, aware of this requirement. He concluded by saying that the purpose of his email to me and to the members of Parliament for Niagara Centre and St. Catharines was to make us “aware that this summer's tourist season will be difficult and frustrating at the border.”
The world is reopening, provinces and territories are reopening and our economies are reopening, yet the federal government continues to drag its feet. The NDP-Liberal government is fully aware of how much chaos the ArriveCAN app could cause at the borders this summer for travellers, tourists and trade. It knows the risks to our economy, and it knows the potential impacts this will have in Niagara and beyond, so why is it continuing to use ArriveCAN and why is it continuing to make ArriveCAN mandatory to use?
We did not have, nor did we need, the federal government's app before the pandemic to cross our borders. Certainly, we do not need this app to continue operating after the pandemic.
The other major issue that has still not been addressed is the underused housing tax, which has the potential to severely and disproportionately impact local property owners in my riding. On March 14, 2022, I wrote the Minister of Finance about this, expressing my great concern. In my email I shared multiple pieces of correspondence I had received as well as a news article that was published by the Buffalo News in New York State.
I wrote seeking urgent clarification of the proposed wording for the listed exemptions found as part of the underused housing tax proposal, which would add a 1% annual tax on underused foreign-owned real estate in Canada. Unfortunately there is considerable confusion in Niagara across multiple levels of government, both in Canada and the U.S., in the business community and among private property owners as to how this tax will or will not apply to Niagara and foreign-owned vacation properties located in my riding. Our communities and stakeholders who may be impacted by this tax policy deserve to know with certainty whether they will actually be impacted.
For generations our Canada and U.S. communities along the Niagara River have become highly integrated. When our international borders are open, citizens of both countries frequently travel across the four local bridges to visit family, friends and loved ones, to work, to attend school, to play sports, to receive medical treatments and to travel and enjoy a vacation in their foreign-owned properties on either side of the river. As a result, many Americans own property in various small towns across my riding. Many have owned their properties for decades, going back generations, and a few for over a century. Some of these properties are fitted to be used year-round, while others are seasonal.
Regardless, when our international border finally and fully reopens and travel irritants, such as ArriveCAN, are removed, these small Niagara communities will benefit economically from our American family, friends and neighbours who will be visiting once again. These long-time property owners are considered valued members of our Niagara community. They are part of our social fabric, and they support our local economies. It would be wrong to target them specifically in Niagara with a punitive levy such as the underused housing tax.
I could go on for so much longer on what we need from the federal government to achieve economic recovery. Our economy should be fully reopened and recovered from this pandemic by now, but it is not. Workers should be back to work to help alleviate severe labour shortages and strengthen our supply chains, but they are not. For two years, Canadians have done their part. It is due time for the federal government to hold up its end of the bargain by ending the federal pandemic mandates and letting Canadians get on with their lives.
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