- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- South Shore—St. Margarets
- Nova Scotia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,927.65
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I know my colleague from Calgary Centre has done a lot of good work in the area of mergers and acquisitions throughout his career. I would like him to comment on what we are actually debating today that some members in the NDP-Liberal coalition do not seem to want to talk about, which is the removal, in the bill, of cabinet from the decision-making process.
Given that my colleague has sat at C-suite tables and board tables, and I know he understands how cabinet works, does he not think decision-making processes in the area of foreign takeovers would be much enhanced by the collective decision-making of a management team, a board or a cabinet as opposed to letting one lone minister make the decisions?
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue provides a lot of great input at the industry committee, and I appreciate that we have a lot of thoughtful discussions.
I agree that we should not create artificial time when we are dealing with very critical acquisitions. Whether it is a private sector company from around the world taking over Rona, for example, or a state-owned enterprise, the minister needs to not be restricted by arbitrary timelines so we can get the adequate national security net benefit and can analyze whether they have been convicted of corruption or bribery, thanks to the Conservatives, who put that in. Those are considerations the government should review in a thorough manner, not necessarily feeling that it has to rush things through.
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Mr. Speaker, today, we are debating Bill 34, an act to amend the Investment Canada Act, at report stage. We are dealing with a new amendment to this bill from the Conservative side of the House, as well as some housekeeping amendments from the government side.
To make sure everybody watching understands what the Investment Canada Act is about, it deals with the acquisition of Canadian companies by foreign entities: companies and governments that come to Canada to try to acquire our businesses. There is a government process, through Investment Canada, that these entities need to go through with the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and cabinet. Through the bill before us, cabinet would be removed from the process. I will speak to this in a moment.
Wayne Gretzky, whom I know everybody here admires, said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take”, and this bill fits that description. While it would make administrative amendments and speed up the process a little, it missed the opportunity to look at what is happening in the Canadian economy and deal with the increasing acquisitions of assets and businesses of various sizes, from small businesses worth a few million dollars up to minerals rights and large corporations, by states that are hostile to us. As has been said before, it has been 14 years since the act was amended. A lot has changed in the world, in particular around the way that state-owned enterprises have become extraterritorial in taking over companies around the world for their own economic interests. The Conservatives' challenge with the bill is that it thinks small. It did not use this opportunity to take a shot on net and score a goal by recognizing the change in the global economy and what is happening with the outright sales of Canadian businesses and assets to hostile states.
The minister is the minister of broken bills, which is why we are having to make more amendments to this one. On his other bill, Bill C-27, after a year and a half, he has had to make amendments. Perhaps if he had spent more time here in Canada understanding what was going on, he might have produced better legislation. The Liberals missed the chance to think big and understand what is going on in our economy. What is going on in our economy is what I call the Chinese government cold war. We are in a new cold war. It is not one of bombs and the military in that sense; it is the silent takeover of the economic assets of other countries. This is how China is gaining influence all around the world. We all know about the election interference issues, but those things are perhaps a little more obvious than this is to Canadians, this creeping strategic control by the Communist Party of China of Canada's assets and those of other countries. Other countries have put mechanisms in place within their investment acts to recognize this and prevent it. The bill, as it was introduced in the House and debated at second reading, did not contain any of that.
Small businesses in my riding, such as lobster buyers, are $2-million businesses being bought for $10 million by China. The Chinese government owns a number of lobster businesses in my riding. It is how it is getting control of our seafood assets behind the door. It is doing the same in agriculture. It is buying land and farms in western Canada and mineral rights in our land. It is buying more obvious things, which I will speak to. It is buying companies like the only producing lithium mine in Canada. Therefore, Bill 34 missed a lot and would just make small administrative changes.
The Communist Party of China cold war's being ignored in Canada might be out of incompetence, but it also could be the case, as we know, that the Prime Minister believes that China is his most admired country, so maybe it is more strategic. Let us take a look at the Liberal government's record on this issue.
In 2017, the Liberal government allowed a telecom company from B.C. called Norsat to be acquired by a company called Hytera, which is Chinese-based. Hytera does not make any money. Conservatives demanded, at the time, a full national security review. The Liberal minister of the day refused to do one and approved the acquisition. Lo and behold, in 2022, Hytera was charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States and was banned from doing business there, but only eight months later, the RCMP in Canada, shockingly, bought telecommunications equipment from Hytera to put in its communications system. When I asked the RCMP, at the industry committee, because it was in all the newspapers, whether its members were aware that eight months before, Hytera had done this and been banned in the U.S., the RCMP, shockingly, said no.
I referred earlier to the Tanco mine, our only producing lithium mine, which was bought by the Sinomine Resource Group, a Chinese-owned mining company. Every ounce of that lithium in our critical minerals industry goes to China.
The record on this is very awkward for the government to hear, but it is a growing concern. It did not take those things into consideration in drafting the bill before us, As a responsible opposition to His Majesty, the Conservatives proposed a number of amendments in committee, and thanks to the support of the other two opposition parties amidst the objections of the Liberals, we made some significant amendments. Those amendments include that with any state-owned enterprise from a country that does not have a bilateral trade relationship with Canada, the threshold for review by the Government of Canada would now be zero dollars. Any transaction over zero dollars would be reviewed, compared to the threshold now, which is $512 million. China is buying a lot of assets for under $512 million, and the threshold would now be zero. The same would apply for a new concept we added, which is that all asset sales would need to be included in that test with a state-owned enterprise.
Today, we are also taking this one step further by saying that the minister has made yet another error. That error was trying to consolidate all his power and ignore his cabinet colleagues. The bill would change the Investment Canada Act process that requires that at the beginning, when an acquisition is made, the minister take his recommendation on how far to go with a national security and net benefit review into a study. The bill before us says that he would not have to do that anymore and that he could decide on his own, that at the end of the process, whatever the results are, he would come back and say he will decide whether or not he goes to cabinet with the results.
Removing cabinet from the decision-making process would mean that we would not get the breadth of experience of people around the cabinet table and that we also would not get the breadth of experience from regional perspectives. For example, there have been companies bought in Quebec. If an industry minister is from Ontario and our public safety minister is from out west, they would make the decision on their own without any input from Quebec. I suspect that the Bloc Québécois would be opposed to that issue and would want to see Quebec representation in those decision-making processes, but the bill before us has the potential to eliminate that part of it.
We are proposing common sense Conservative amendments, as we did in committee. Thankfully we upped the ante of the bill and made it more than an administrative bill such that it would deal with the serious international challenges we had, through the four amendments that were accepted. By the way, there are two national tests in there. One is on national security and the other is on the net benefit to Canada. Conservatives in committee added a third: if a company has been convicted of bribery or corruption, the minister would now have to take that into consideration in deciding whether to approve the acquisition. It would add much benefit, but, for some reason, Liberals did not think it was worthy when they voted against it.
We believe that Conservatives have improved the bill dramatically. We are trying to improve it again in the spirit of good public policy for Canada and protecting our economy against hostile interests, which the Liberals seem not to care about. I urge the House, including all members from the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the government, to recognize that cabinet's decision-making process is essential to getting the full breadth of things, and I urge members to vote for our amendment.
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Madam Speaker, I listened intently to the member for Kingston and the Islands' speech. In my opening speech on this I said that these micro-administrative changes are much needed, but they are likely not to do what is claimed. The government has had the opportunity, over the last eight years, in the existing act, to reject takeovers by Chinese state-owned enterprises of Canadian assets. These include the Tanco mine in Manitoba where the government actually said no to a national security review, and Hytera, which took over telecommunications businesses. The then minister of industry said no to a national security review.
Can this member please tell me what in this bill will ensure that those types of acquisitions by state-owned enterprises are reviewed in the future?
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Madam Speaker, the government for which the member was in cabinet actually approved two acquisitions. One was Hytera acquiring Norsat, and the other was a Chinese state-owned enterprise acquiring a mining entity that has 65% of Canada's lithium production. The government approved those without a national security review. There is nothing in this bill that would change that, especially if the minister does not have to go to cabinet.
I would like the member's views on that.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his work over the years on the industry committee and that particular report. It is a very good report. I would encourage all members to read it. I support all of the recommendations in that report.
I think we can work together when Bill C-34 comes to the industry committee, to work on that transparency. Reasons why an acquisition is reviewed and reasons for accepting or rejecting it by the cabinet, the Governor in Council and the minister are things that should be published with the decision each time. That way, Canadians would be able to fully understand the rationale behind what sometimes look like very odd things, such as when we lose very important Canadian-headquartered businesses to other jurisdictions, particularly when they are, in the case of some acquisitions, countries not as aligned with our goals as we would like.
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Madam Speaker, I really enjoy sitting on the fisheries committee with the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith. She brings a lot of good value to that committee, as does the member for Cape Breton—Canso.
That is an important question because this is below the threshold. The fisheries industry, which is a strategic food industry for Canada, is not, in any of the lists I have heard from the minister, generally listed as an industry that should be protected. Our food industry is below the threshold for review because these acquisitions are smaller companies that are way below the review, whether it is from China or the United States.
We are seeing more and more on the B.C. coast that many of the fisheries licences are owned by Chinese state-owned enterprises, and on the east coast we are seeing the processing side of things and the fish-buying things in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia being acquired by countries from all over the world, but primarily China.
I understand there is nothing in this bill that would stop those types of things coming. I would like to explore this a little more in committee. Perhaps the only thing would be, at this stage, if the minister put fisheries as part of the food strategic investments on his list.
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