- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
- Conservative
- St. Albert—Edmonton
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $119,185.60
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, with respect to the issue of undertaking reviews, the amendment that Conservatives put forward was specifically targeted at countries that we do not have trade agreements with. For those countries that we do have agreements with, and that includes the European Union and most European countries, that automatic review would not apply.
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Mr. Speaker, in short, Conservatives fully supported that amendment around IP. It is an amendment that would have strengthened the bill but the Liberals did not support it. They did not support that amendment and they did not support our amendments.
As far as the Bloc Québécois goes, I believe the Bloc opposed the amendment. I would say in regard to this bill that the Liberals have been soft on national security issues and standing up to the likes of hostile states such as Beijing. By contrast, the Bloc has not been much better. It has been all over the map and completely incoherent.
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Mr. Speaker, it is going to force the government to do what it needed to do and had not done before by lowering the threshold from $512 million to zero with respect to investments from foreign-controlled enterprises. This is a government that announced a policy. The minister announced a policy in 2020. What good is a policy if the policy is not followed? That policy had no teeth and the minister was not sincere about seeing it through, so this bill is an improvement.
I will say that there were other amendments that Conservatives supported but these Liberals opposed, that would have gone a long way to strengthen the bill, including the fact that Beijing acquires companies and investments, sometimes through third party entities. We have supported an amendment that would have allowed for a proper review where those assets were then sold to a Beijing or other foreign state-controlled enterprise. The Liberals voted against it.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-34, an act to amend the Investment Canada Act, at report stage. I will get into the particulars of the bill shortly, but before I do, let me say that in a little more than an hour and a half, Liberal members across the way will have a choice. They can vote for our common-sense Conservative motion to axe the tax on all home heating, or they can do the bidding of their boss, the Prime Minister, and sell out their constituents.
These are Liberal MPs from Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. We will see whose side they are on, because their colleagues from Atlantic Canada, including the member for Avalon, received an exemption for Atlantic Canadians on home heating oil. However, it seems that all other Liberal MPs are so useless that their constituents, including my constituents, Albertans, have received nothing. We will see whose side Liberal MPs, including the member for Edmonton Centre and the member for Calgary Skyview, are on very shortly.
With respect to this legislation, when it was presented in the House at second reading stage, it was a modest bill. It was, frankly, inadequate in terms of strengthening the foreign investment review process, which takes into account the net benefit for Canada, as well as national security considerations. However, the good news is that the bill has been significantly improved thanks to four Conservative amendments that were adopted at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, although opposed by the Liberals.
I would submit that the most important of those amendments is to require a mandatory security review for investments by foreign state-owned enterprises in which Canada does not have a trading agreement with the countries.
This legislation marks the first major revamp of the Investment Canada Act since 2009. It goes without saying the foreign investment environment has changed considerably in that time, with foreign bad actors, including Beijing, posing an increased threat to our security and sovereignty.
PRC firms work closely with Beijing's military and intelligence apparatuses to gain information about foreign companies, as well as to acquire their technology. Professor Balding, who testified at the industry committee in 2020, indicated that PRC firms are actually given a list each year of foreign assets to acquire, underscoring the threat posed by Beijing.
The fact that we have this increasing threat demonstrates that the Investment Canada Act is long overdue for an update. However, for the past eight years, the Prime Minister has been asleep at the switch, while Beijing has attacked our sovereignty, security and democracy on his watch.
Beijing has used its embassy and consulates to interfere in our elections and to target sitting members of Parliament for daring to speak up and call out Beijing's egregious human rights violations, including the genocide being perpetrated against Uyghur Muslims as we speak. This regime has set up illegal police stations to harass, intimidate and repatriate Chinese Canadians, and it is spreading disinformation on a mass scale to divide Canadians.
In the face of that, the response of the Prime Minister has been to do nothing, to turn a blind eye. Indeed, the only concrete measure that the Prime Minister took was to expel one Beijing diplomat, but only after he got caught for keeping the member for Wellington—Halton Hills in the dark about how he and his family were targeted by a diplomat at Beijing's Toronto consulate.
For the past eight years, Beijing has effectively been given the green light to acquire vast amounts of farmland. It has gained a foothold with respect to critical infrastructure and strategic resources, including minerals. Even worse than that, we have a government, under the Prime Minister's watch, that has refused to undertake national security reviews and has given the green light to Beijing-controlled enterprises to invest in Canada and acquire Canadian companies, to the detriment of Canada's national security. In so doing, it has also caused irreparable damage to Canada's reputation among our Five Eyes allies.
One egregious example of that, and I stress that there are many examples I could cite, was when the Beijing-controlled Hytera sought to acquire the B.C. communications technology company Norsat, which worked with National Defence Canada, Public Safety Canada and the Pentagon. Our U.S. ally said to put a pause on this takeover by Hytera, but the Liberal minister of the day, in his infinite wisdom, ignored the U.S. and gave the green light without any security review.
Last year, Hytera was charged with 21 counts of espionage by the U.S. This underscores the degree of recklessness on the part of the government to give the green light, not to mention the damage it has done to our reputation with our most important ally, the United States.
As bad as that is, one would think that after a company such as Hytera was facing 21 espionage charges in the U.S., it would be enough for the government to decide not to do business with Hytera. However, one would be wrong; it was not enough for the current Liberals. Eight months later, the Liberals gave the green light for a contract with the RCMP to sell technology to protect sensitive RCMP communications equipment for espionage from a subsidiary of none other than Hytera, a company charged with 21 counts of espionage. One cannot make this stuff up. It is scandalous incompetence with real national security implications.
In 2020, to make it appear that he was actually taking Beijing's interference seriously, the minister of industry announced a policy of enhanced scrutiny for investments from foreign state-owned enterprises. No sooner had he announced the policy than he disregarded it, giving the green light to another Beijing state-owned enterprise to acquire a mining company that operates the largest lithium mine in Canada. Now, all that lithium is controlled by Beijing.
In closing, let me say that when it comes to protecting Canada's national security from authoritarian states such as Beijing, the government cannot be trusted. The good news, however, is that this bill would require the reckless government to undertake the security reviews that it should have taken but did not. On that basis, it is a much stronger bill going forward, thanks to the Conservatives and no thanks to the Liberals.
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- Feb/17/22 8:12:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak this evening to the government's unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act. This act has been on the books for 34 years, and in those 34 years it has not been used on a single occasion: not during the Oka crisis, not during Caledonia, not in the wake of September 11, and not following the 2020 blockades of critical infrastructure, including railway lines and pipelines, that went on for two months. Never before has this act been invoked.
There is a good reason that this act has never been invoked before, and that is because it is exceptional legislation meant for the most extreme circumstances. It provides the government with sweeping powers that infringe upon the charter rights and civil liberties of Canadians. These are powers including prohibiting public assemblage, seizing property, freezing bank accounts without warrant and limiting or prohibiting travel within Canada. I could go on. These are extraordinary powers indeed.
In light of the exceptional nature of this legislation, intended for the most extreme circumstances, the threshold that must be satisfied in order to establish that there is a national emergency pursuant to the act is indeed extremely high. An emergency under the act is an “urgent and critical situation that seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians, or seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada.”
Not only that, the emergency must be of a nature so as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, and so no other law on the books can effectively deal with the situation.
It is patently clear that the very high threshold has not been satisfied. Indeed, it has not come close to being satisfied.
The government, in justifying the invocation of these extraordinary powers, talks about ending blockades. When one turns to the order in council issued on Monday that specifies the nature of the purported emergency, the order in council speaks of the continuing blockades of critical infrastructure, including trade corridors and international border crossings. It speaks to the adverse impacts these blockades have had with trading partners, particularly the United States, and it speaks of a breakdown in the supply chain and availability of goods as a result of these blockades.
However, there is a big problem for the government. There are no blockades in Canada today, on the Canada-U.S. border or anywhere. There were no such blockades on Monday, when the government invoked the order in council and the Emergencies Act.
There were blockades on the Canada-U.S. border at Coutts, Windsor and Surrey. Those blockades were unlawful. They were wrong, and they were dispersed prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act under tools already available to law enforcement and under existing laws.
I remind the government that in the act, in order to utilize the Emergencies Act it must be demonstrated that no other laws on the books can reasonably be used. That simply has not borne out to be the case.
We are now left with the situation here in Ottawa. There are trucks outside on Wellington St. in front of Parliament Hill. There are some protesters. In addition to the street in front of Parliament Hill being affected, there are some streets immediately around the parliamentary precinct and downtown Ottawa that are affected. Yes, it has created unpleasantness. Yes, it has been a nuisance. Yes, there have been illegal activities by certain people who are here. That does not make a national emergency.
Indeed, all of the tools that exist are there and have been used. For example, the honking of horns has largely been addressed by way of an injunction issued by a judge. The Criminal Code, transportation laws and municipal bylaws are tools on the books to address this situation. What cannot be justified is invoking the Emergencies Act.
The Emergencies Act is not needed and is not warranted, because there is no national emergency. What we have is a Prime Minister who has invoked the Emergencies Act absent a national emergency. That is an abuse of power on the part of the Prime Minister. It is a perversion of the rule of law. It threatens the rights and freedoms of Canadians right across Canada, not just those who are standing outside Parliament Hill. It also sets a dangerous precedent of normalizing the extraordinary powers authorized pursuant to the act.
The Prime Minister knows the threshold has not been met, but the Prime Minister does not care because, for the Prime Minister, it is all about political theatre. The Prime Minister knows that what he is doing is wrong and that he is acting unlawfully. The members on that side of the House, the members of the NDP, the coalition partners of the government, have a choice. They can follow the law pursuant to the Emergencies Act, or they can aid and abet this abuse of power on the part of the Prime Minister. The choice is clear.
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