So V ote

Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

Jun/8/23 5:42:22 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-294

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand here tonight to speak to the bill presented by the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Bill C-294, regarding interoperability, and the member who spoke previous to me, the member for Mirabel, who is my seatmate, spoke eloquently about the impacts and the structure of this on the agriculture industry, which I will come to. However, if you will provide me a little leeway, Mr. Speaker, as members know, the Speaker's riding and mine have had some dramatic forest fires these last two weeks. In the context of this bill and agriculture, I just want to stand up and thank a few people in the riding and in the Speaker's riding who have done an amazing job dealing with the issue of livestock that had to be evacuated. It is a huge issue. People do not generally think about that in these kinds of fires, but on Cape Sable Island in Shelburne County there was agriculture livestock, and a lot of it, that had to be quickly evacuated, because it is tough to move it slowly. They actually did not have an evacuation order, but they moved it out in case. They moved it to the exhibition in Yarmouth, in the Speaker's riding, and they were fantastic to deal with. They took in a lot of animals and kept them safe and healthy, as did the exhibition in Bridgewater, in my riding. It was a full house of livestock that had to be safely moved and stored, which is no small effort. I would like to thank both those organizations for all the volunteer work they did to protect the animals. In Bill C-294, the summary says that the enactment would amend the Copyright Act to allow a person, in certain circumstances, to circumvent, or get around, a technological protection measure, TPM, which is a technical term, to make a computer program interoperable, or in other words to make a computer program work with any device or component, or with a product they manufacture. On this bill, we need to start with what the purpose of the Copyright Act is, and the member for Mirabel touched on it. The Copyright Act provides exclusive rights for authors and creators of works. It can be an artistic work, a dramatic work, a musical work or a literary work, and the latter category encompasses computers and computer programs. These exclusive rights are collectively referred to as “copyright”. Copyright provides the rights holder, the person who created the work, the sole authority to perform specific acts vis à vis the product. They control what happens to their product. That is the purpose of copyright, and these rights are listed under section 3 of the Copyright Act and include the sole right to reproduce the works, so that the owner and creator is the only one who can reproduce that work, or they can choose to rent that work out to somebody else, and that includes a computer program, like when we sign up for or buy Windows. We buy a licence, but we we do not actually own the software. That is owned by the manufacturer, but the manufacturer can license those out. A copyright generally lasts for a person's lifetime plus 50 years. Other persons may use a protected work under certain circumstances. The owner of a copyright may assign it to another person. They may also license the use of the work with or without conditions, often in return for a payment or royalties. What is this act doing on artistic copyright related to the issue of technology and specifically farm equipment? An important part of that is that section 41 of the Copyright Act defines circumventing a TPM, which I referred to earlier, as descrambling a scrambled work, decrypting an encrypted work or otherwise avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating or impairing the TPM. In other words, circumventing it is trying to find a way to use that computer program or work that one was not authorized to use as a person who is not the original rights holder. This is an important part of what this is trying to get at. The member who is putting this bill forward worked quite extensively with people in his riding who are concerned and having trouble delivering their businesses. With increased computerization in the development of everything that we buy or do, whether it be a cellphone or even a fridge now, as everything has computer chips the technology can be used to actually be anti-competitive. It can be used to make it exclusive so that nobody else can access or connect another device to that device, in order to make someone buy their other devices and not be able to buy a competitor's device. It is becoming more difficult over time for manufacturers to market their innovative products if they cannot connect to the original product if it requires that. Large companies such as John Deere, which the member for Mirabel mentioned, have introduced what are called digital locks on machinery. This move restricts access to repair or interoperate the tractor or equipment with another manufacturer's equipment. One cannot even go in and repair it, whether it is on warranty or not, unless it is through an authorized dealer. That is a primary concern as to operating farm equipment because when a repair of this type of equipment needs to be done, it is not done when one is not harvesting, but done when one is out in the field. It is very difficult often to get those who are the only authorized repair people to actually be able to come out, repair that equipment, get the parts and do it all in a timely manner so that one can get back to one's work in farming. Every day lost is an important and costly loss for that farmer. As a result of all that, those who are significantly disadvantaged by this have been calling for changes that would safeguard both the right to repair and the right to connect one manufacturer's equipment to another manufacturer's equipment. One may prefer a different combine from the combine that John Deere has one's equipment hooked up to. That is a big issue. What this bill attempts to do is allow, in certain circumstances, an individual who owns that equipment to seek repair from suppliers or even on their own by accessing it and getting it repaired without having to go to that authorized dealer only. That “authorized dealer only” concept is a sort of monopolistic trait that says that if I can only go to that dealer then I am sort of held captive to what that dealer is going to charge me for those repairs. It prevents a free and open market. We are going to see this not only in farm equipment but with everything in our lives. Try to buy one's home appliances from different manufacturers. If they are all computerized and one is from one manufacturer and the other from another manufacturer, although they are supposed to be able to “talk” to each other they will not be able to because of these restrictions around TPMs and the inability to do this. The member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands began working with all of these groups and put together, as the member for Mirabel said, a very simple bill. It is not very long. It is two clauses and it repairs that simple clause in the act. I would commend the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for tackling this. Sometimes it is confused with the right to repair, which is another private member's bill before this House, which is the right for us to repair a certain thing in a certain way. This bill makes sure that, if one wants to connect two pieces of equipment together that have technological protection, one will be able to get that done without breaking the law. As we consider this going forward, I will be supporting the bill. We studied it at the industry committee. It is now here for third reading. I would encourage all members of this House to support this important bill, which is pro-competition.

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Jun/8/23 11:29:28 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith and I served together on the fisheries committee, and she is very passionate about the fisheries issues, as am I. I am surprised she did not ask me about Bill C-365 from the 42nd Parliament, which was introduced by our colleague on the fisheries committee, the member for North Okanagan—Shuswap. His bill sought to amend the Criminal Code to establish specific penalties related to the theft of firefighting equipment. It also would have created an aggravating circumstance for sentencing if the mischief involved firefighting equipment. Finally, it would have established sentencing objectives in relation to the theft of such equipment. Rather than expressing support for the firefighters, which the member had a chance to do, the Bloc and the Liberals at that time, although I know the member is of the class of 2021 and was not there, all voted against the bill that would have penalized people for stealing firefighting equipment to help us fight these fires.

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Jun/8/23 11:26:13 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as an MP who understands his riding and was on the ground during these fires and talking to firefighters, I know what started the fires. The reason I wrote that is because the Halifax fire was a fire in the suburbs. The minister should know this, but he apparently does not. It was not a forest fire. It ran through houses. Sixteen thousand people were evacuated, not in a forest but in a suburb.

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Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

Jun/8/23 11:14:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. As we know, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, said, “All politics are local.” I am going to focus on what has been happening in my community, my district, in the last two weeks. At 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 28, two weekends ago, first responders in Halifax arrived in the Westwood Hills subdivision in Halifax. This is in my district, 10 minutes from my house. They were responding to reports of a house on fire. They were there in minutes. The fire was driven by winds of 40 kilometres an hour, and it was spreading rapidly through the house and moving to other homes in this family suburban neighbourhood. It was engulfing homes and hopscotching from house to house. It was missing some, burning others and skipping and bouncing over streets. Cellphones screamed with an alert for residents to immediately leave their homes. Over the next hour, as the wind drove the flames across neighbourhoods along Hammonds Plains Road, more than 16,000 people were evacuated. Many, not knowing what to do, went to the homes of friends and family outside the evacuation zone. Others went to the comfort centres, which were set up quickly by volunteers. Some were set up within an hour, such as the ones at the Black Point fire hall and Black Point & Area Community Centre on St. Margarets Bay and the Canada Games Centre in Bayers Lake. They were set up by volunteers, such as Janet Fryday Dorey, who opened the Black Point comfort centre and kept it open from then until this day. The volunteers at the centres were and are remarkable. They put their lives and families on hold to provide comfort, food, clothes, a place to sleep, a person to talk to, a place to help find accommodation and a place to regroup in this trying, confusing and emotional time. There were volunteers like my neighbour, Peggy Pippy, who ran food and clothing drives for victims. To give some idea of the desperation of the evacuation, I want to share an experience. Captain Kevin Corkum and firefighter Conor Scott were working at the firefighting command post on Hammonds Plains Road in Halifax on that Sunday when an emergency call came in. A family could not get to their elderly father, who has dementia and was at home on Yankeetown Road. This was inside the evacuation zone, where the fire was raging. Fire crews had retreated from the area because of the speed of the fire, which was making it unsafe for them to battle the intensity of the flames. Captain Corkum said, “When the 911 call came in [saying] that there was a person in the house, we knew that fire conditions were going to be bad on that road.... But that's what we do. We're the fire service. Our main objective is life safety.” Captain Corkum said that he and firefighter Scott, wearing only basic personal protective gear, and with no oxygen equipment, jumped into the chief's pickup truck to attempt to save the man. Firefighter Scott said, “There were moments when it felt like we were driving through a wall of fire”. Captain Corkum reported that “as they travelled toward Yankeetown Road, day turned into night, and visibility was zero.” They could not see the civic numbers and ended up passing the home twice before they found the driveway. “As we pulled up, everything around the house was on fire. There were trees on two sides, maybe 20 to 30 feet away, and everything was on fire,” the captain said. Captain Corkum was driving and instructed firefighter Scott that he had 30 seconds to check the house for the man. Both doors were locked, so Scott ended up kicking in the front door. Captain Corkum said, “The elderly gentleman was in his chair unaware of what was going on, unaware of the danger [around him].” Corkum and Scott grabbed the man, lifted him up and carried him into the truck, with only minutes, maybe even seconds, to get out, and “Captain Corkum said it was one of those moments that ‘you're there doing what has to be done.’” “It's the first time,” he said, “in my 22 years that I'm looking around...and I'm like, ‘I really don't know that I'm 100 per cent going to get out of this’”. According to Captain Corkum, “Luckily...they were able to make it through the smoke and embers to get the man to the command post, where he could be assessed by paramedics.” After, Scott said, “My heart grew a little bit. I was very, very happy when we passed him off”. He continued: And then it was just moments later before we're on to the next task. But there was this brief, beautiful moment where we knew he was going to get back to his family. Corkum and Scott “then went on to help evacuate a home in Upper Tantallon, where a family was still packing items” and could not escape. Captain Corkum said to the media, “It was an unprecedented fire for me, just with the speed and the forward momentum that fire had and just the sheer amount of fire”. He went on to say, “I've never seen anything like it in my 22 years, that's for sure.” According to Brendan Meagher, “even though the pair knew it was dangerous, they kept going.” He stated: They kept going, they got to the house, they got in and they got him in that truck and...they got out of there and they saved his life. I believe, as do most Nova Scotians, that what they did was remarkable and heroic. According to Captain Corkum, this was only one story of those told during these devastating fires. I'm sure there are many people with many stories of real heroism that we will hear from in the coming days. I would like to share with members another experience I had during this time in my riding last week. The next day after that fire, Monday, May 29, after attending the morning news conference with the Halifax deputy fire chief, I drove two hours south to the town of Shelburne. I went to the fire hall and command centre, which was managing the fire for the municipality. I met with Fire Chief Locke. He and his crew had just arrived back from Clyde River, where they were battling the spread of the Barrington Lake fire. It was quickly becoming the largest fire in the history of Nova Scotia, with 65,000 acres on fire. In Clyde River, the fire had jumped the highway, as it had jumped across the lake a few hours earlier. Chief Locke told me that the freight train speed and the power of the fire overcame the firefighters, who had to abandon their hoses and gear and jump into their trucks; they barely escaped with their lives. He has been a firefighter for 50 years, and he had a hard time with his emotions as he described what his team faced. The flames they were battling reached 200 feet high and whirled around them. This happened time and again to crews battling this beast. Half the county was evacuated. Yesterday, the fire was only declared held; it is not growing beyond the 65,000 acres. More than 200 kilometres of the area has been destroyed. The Halifax fire is now 100% contained. The two fires incinerated more than 300 private property houses and buildings, destroying homes, dreams, family treasures, vehicles and everything dear to these families, and to us, including pets, dogs and cats, that were lost in the flames. The job of rebuilding for these families is immense. It is going to take time before everyone can return home safely. Knowing that the fire cannot resurface and restart is essential. The 190 professional volunteer firefighters who have kept the Barrington Lake fire out of the towns of Barrington and Shelburne are exhausted. They worked 18 hours a day. A member of my constituency team, Tyson Ross, is one of these firefighters; he slept in his own bed for the first time two nights ago. However, they know the work is not done. They need to get the 65,000 acres secure and fire-free before residents, who simply want to go home, can do so safely. They left their jobs to save their communities. They left their families to risk their lives to save others. They left their own evacuated houses in the fire zone to save the houses of their neighbours and strangers. The words “thank you” seem desperately insufficient for what they have done for our province and these communities, given what we owe them. Nonetheless, I will conclude by thanking the volunteer firefighters who fought and controlled the fires at Beech Hill Road and Pubnico. I want to send an enormous thanks to the hundreds of firefighters who fought, and got under control, the Halifax fire, and who have enabled all but a few thousand of the 16,000 residents to return home. From the bottom of my heart, I thank the 190 firefighters who have fought, and continue to fight, the largest fire in the history of our province, known as the Barrington Lake fire, and the Lake Road fires in Shelburne County, over the last 14 days.

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Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

Jun/5/23 11:55:13 p.m.
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Madam Chair, what the hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue's community and that of the member for Manicouagan are going through right now is very similar to mine. One of the experiences I had, and it was not a good time but a very difficult time in the community of Shelburne, was that, when the lobster season was ending, I asked the government if it would extend the lobster season to get the traps out of the waters because the lobster fishermen were most of the volunteer firefighters, and they were also evacuated from their homes, so they could not get to their boats and could not get on the water. The government accommodated that and continues to accommodate that. I was behind the lines with the volunteer firefighters. Most of our firefighters in rural Canada are volunteers. They are putting in 18-hour days around the clock to try to deal with this, and for the rest of the day, they are sleeping at the fire station where they are. I am wondering if the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue could share with us any of what he is hearing about the role of the volunteer firefighters in his community and that of Manicouagan and other communities in Quebec.

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Jun/5/23 11:27:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do appreciate that this co-operation has been real, but the only way I could do that was to actually be in the communities, as I was, back and forth to Barrington, Shelburne, Tantallon every day. However, there was not courage from me. There is courage in the firefighters and the people fighting these fires. That is where all the courage and the heroes are.

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Jun/5/23 11:24:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when we have no-burn rules that have come from our provincial governments, saying that people should not burn, or should be very cautious when we have dry seasons like we have, people should not think they can control the fire because they are someone special. That seems to still happen in Nova Scotia during all of this. These are ridings that rely on their own water, their own wells and septic systems. When people go back, they cannot drink the water; they have to have it tested. The provincial government of Nova Scotia is going to be providing, starting tomorrow, free water testing to make sure that, when people go back, that gets done. Primarily, people need to think about what they do on their own property. They need to make sure it is clean so there is not material there to catch fire. Most important, I ask people, when we are in this type of situation, to please not be lighting even local campfires or local bonfires at night just because they think they can control them.

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Jun/5/23 11:22:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is a great question. In everything, we can always do better, but in this case, because this was so unprecedented, I think things came together fairly well. I heard, and still hear, enormous frustration from residents of my community who ask why all of it did not happen with a faster response. With 40-kilometre-per-hour winds and this thing rolling through like a freight train, it was very difficult to react as quickly as people wanted everyone to. The member talked about federal resources. I think that is a great idea. I think one of the things this experience has taught me is that the federal government's role is coordinating and trying to find all the assets that are across the country. Right now, there are not any available. That was a challenge. The federal government should have some ability to have some equipment to add. This is not the first or primary job of the armed forces. We were thankful they could come in, but they are not professional firefighters. They do not have professional firefighting equipment. They do not have water bombers. There were six water bombers that had to come on Friday night from Montana. There were three from Newfoundland and a number from New Brunswick. For Nova Scotia, that will be part of the analysis afterwards. It needs to have a little more ability. I think it is an important area we should be looking at from the federal government to see what kind of resources we could have available more permanently.

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Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

Jun/5/23 11:10:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have heard some very good speeches tonight on this important issue. I would like to start by thanking the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay for bringing this forward. I would like to make more of a personal comment. I am not the first member of Parliament who has had to deal with wildfires in the riding, but two of the largest wildfires in Nova Scotia are in my riding, and one of them is still out of control. Therefore, I would just like to personalize this a bit with what the last eight days have been like in my province. Going back to Sunday, May 28, two Sundays ago, as members of Parliament, most of us were either flying to Ottawa to come here to do our jobs, as we do every week, or we were preparing, like I was, to leave early on Monday morning. It was late in the afternoon of that Sunday when my phone started to go with an alert that there was a fire and an evacuation going on 10 minutes from my house. There was a major fire in the community of Tantallon, which I am sure nobody in the House had ever heard of until eight days ago. It is a wonderful community up behind exit 5, as we call it, off the 103. It is the exit where people get off to go to Peggys Cove and St. Margarets Bay. It is a community of families and young families. There are three day cares there. There are a lot of retired folks, including quite a few retired RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces personnel, up there. There is an RCMP detachment in Tantallon, right there by the Sobeys. There is one street in and out of this subdivision, and it has no fire hydrants. On the back of it is the wilderness that is Nova Scotia. It is about a 15-minute drive from downtown Halifax. That day, the wind was about 40 kilometres an hour in Nova Scotia. On the first evening of the evacuation on that Sunday, I went to the newly opened comfort centre in the Black Point fire hall, which is about 30 seconds from my house. It was opened quickly by one of the two volunteer managers of the community centre, Janet Fryday Dorey. As people streamed in, they were really just in a state of shock. I talked to one couple who were sitting on their porch at about 3:30 in the afternoon having a beverage, as people tend to do after they have cut the lawn or done their chores on the weekend. They were sitting there and said that in so-and-so's back yard there was a fire going. Then the fire started to get bigger and within moments it had spread to their house and very quickly, because the winds were 40 kilometres an hour, it spread to the next house. The couple said, “We'd better get out of here”. They quickly got in their car and left. There was a roofer working on a roof next door who saw the fire happening, got off the roof and started to knock on people's doors to get them evacuated. When they came in, they were saying they did not know what was happening, that their neighbourhood was on fire and they did not know where to go or what they would do. This was not a comfort centre where people could sleep. It did not have showers. Community members started to come in, saying, “I have a room” and “I have a place for somebody to stay if they need it.” People from a couple of local inns in Hubbards came in and said, “If there is anyone who is evacuated, they can stay here for free.” Then food started to arrive. For Nova Scotians and most Canadians, food is the first response to a crisis, and food started to come in so that people had food to eat. I was there until about 11 o'clock at night. I got home when the centre closed. My cellphone rang, and it was the Minister of Emergency Preparedness calling on a Sunday night. On that first night, he phoned me, the local member of Parliament, to ask what was happening from my perspective, which I greatly appreciated. I was still a bit in shock. I knew there had been a fire starting in the south of my riding two days before. It started around a lake. I also knew that on that same day, 20 minutes down the road in a community called Chester Basin, another fire had started on Beech Hill Road. It was out of control, and the winds were blowing at 40 kilometres an hour. This modest fire in Shelburne County on a lake started on Friday night, May 26, at a party on a lake, when a fire was set to keep people warm. It was accelerated by the wind that Sunday and started to spread across the county. The next morning, the deputy fire chief of Halifax and the Department of National Resources were holding a media briefing to say what was going on. That was in Tantallon for the fire in Tantallon, not the Shelburne one. There were over 100 fire trucks from around the province on the scene in Tantallon, where in the space of two hours, over 16,000 people had been evacuated from their homes and had to find a place to live temporarily. The fire only got worse on Monday and Tuesday. In Shelburne County, the fire doubled in size every single day. If anyone knows Shelburne County at all, it is the big lobster fishing community in the southern part of my riding. There are two main towns and a lot of villages. The two main towns are the town of the Shelburne and the town of Barrington. This fire spread between the two of them. They are 30 kilometres apart. Over the next few days, half of that county was evacuated. That fire is still out of control. It has grown to 25,000 hectares, or 65,000 acres. Luckily, we had some rain on the weekend and it has not grown. It grew a bit on Sunday, but it has basically been stable. Some 5,000 to 6,000 people in that community were evacuated. Part of the fire in Halifax spread into the riding of Halifax West, and over 20,000 people were evacuated in Nova Scotia. During the week, while we were fighting the fire in Shelburne, an additional fire began behind the town of Shelburne, and another one in East Pubnico. There were a number of volunteers at the comfort stations. The Red Cross was running the comfort station in Shelburne, and the Salvation Army was feeding and running a station for the firefighters. My lead constituency assistant is a volunteer firefighter and has been fighting this fire every day since it started in the woods. I was back in the woods with them. They brought me back one night. We had communities shut off. We had firemen shut off. Firemen had to drop their hoses in communities like Clyde River and run for their lives to get on their equipment to escape the speed of this fire. It is feet down in the Earth now. It is a fire we are going to be dealing with in Shelburne County for months and months to come. The Halifax fire is 100% contained. There are still about 5,000 people evacuated in Halifax. The amount of work that has to happen to allow the rest to go back is huge in terms of determining safety, determining water quality, because most are on wells, and restoring power. The premier, the minister of emergency preparedness provincially and the federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness have been working well with all of the municipal officials as one team. This is unprecedented. We have never had this happen in Nova Scotia. There was no playbook for dealing with a suburb of Halifax burning at the same time as the largest fire in our province's history in Shelburne County. I just have to thank all the firefighters and all the first responders, as well as all the volunteers who are still helping to feed the firefighters. I ask for the patience of all those who are still evacuated; I ask them to please not go back until the evacuation orders are lifted. It is not safe. There is no going around it on an ATV or by boat. People will put themselves and others in harm's way if they do that. I ask them to please listen to local officials so we can deal with this as expeditiously as possible.

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Context: House Hansard - 201 - May/29/23

Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

May/29/23 2:11:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am speaking from the fire command centre in Shelburne County on the wildfire crisis at both ends of my district, here and in Halifax. A massive wildfire in Halifax, where I was this morning, forced the evacuation of 18,000 people. That is as many people as are evacuated currently in western Canada. Most left with only the clothes on their backs, as the fire moved extremely fast. There are no fatalities and no missing people so far. The Halifax fire continues to burn out of control, and many homes have been lost. I was at the Halifax comfort centres last night and this morning. The stories are heartbreaking. People rushed to their cars as the fire swept into their backyards, forced by 40-kilometre-an-hour winds. Here in Shelburne County, we are battling an out-of-control wildfire covering 20,000 acres. The communities from Port Clyde to Barrington West have been evacuated and are under threat. More than another 2,000 people have been evacuated. To professional and volunteer firefighters, saying thanks does not seem like enough as they risk their lives to save our communities. I thank the countless volunteers helping these families. Our prayers go out to the families in these uncertain and tragic days. Please pray for our communities.

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Context: House Hansard - 153 - Feb/3/23

Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

Feb/3/23 10:33:53 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-34 Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, the minister told me he is going to Washington next week. I know there is a Chinese surveillance balloon going over the U.S., and I understand the government has withdrawn its terrible firearm amendments to Bill C-21. When the minister is there, if he spots it, maybe he could do something about it with an appropriate firearm. After eight years, the government is finally getting around to making some administrative changes to the Investment Canada Act. Why is this important? Because foreign direct investment is increasing and causing us great problems in Canada. I would start off by informing the House that, while we think these amendments are inadequate to deal with the things that are happening, we will be voting in favour, in principle, at second reading of this bill. These amendments improve the bill, just not enough. However, we will be seeking considerable amendments to improve this bill at the committee stage. The minister went through some of the things the bill does, and I will start by commenting on a few of them. I think the preimplementation filing change required in certain industries when a deal is done, that the filing and notification go to Investment Canada, is good. It should happen after closing. I would have hoped the minister would make all investment applications subject to prefiling. I do not know what the point is of looking at a foreign direct investment after it is closed; it is very difficult to unwind a transaction. The minister spoke about the streamlining of the process to speed it up within the 45 days. We have some concerns about removing cabinet from that process, not necessarily up front, because I think that process to start it is an important one. However, when the review comes back from officials, either for or against it having a national security or net benefit issue, we believe that should go to cabinet in all cases. I know the experience during the Harper government was that when these things came back to cabinet, there was robust discussion on every one, and this resulted in a better decision, Therefore, we think that the power to actually decide that at the end of the day should still rest with cabinet. It does add the ability for the minister to create a list of targeted industries through regulation. We would like to learn a little more about what industries the minister is going to address. I think there are industries outside of the list. These include, to be parochial in my neck of the woods, seafood and other areas that are being targeted in the food sector by state-owned enterprises from less co-operative countries. The interim conditions and all of that in the bill are a good addition to the bill. We want to explore the area of the legal process appeal issues around secrecy for national security or commercial reasons a bit more at committee. We just want to make sure we understand that, in the future, we are not going to be blocking information the public should have. I think there are some transparency provisions in this bill that say if the minister rejects an acquisition, the reasons for this have to be fairly transparent and public. I do not believe there is a requirement to do that now. However, there are some things we do not believe the provisions address. Let us start with the record of the current government regarding China's takeover of many of our important assets. The other thing the bill does not do, and I will talk about this in a few minutes, is deal with the sale not just of companies, but of the assets of companies. In 2017, there was, and still is, a company called Norsat out of British Columbia, which also owns a company called Sinclair in Toronto. It was acquired by Hytera in China, which is partially owned by the Government of China, in the critical telecommunications business. Even though he was urged many times in the House, the minister of industry of the day refused to do a national security review of that acquisition. The minister has the freedom to say that he does not think it is a problem and he is not going to do it. Therefore, no national security review was done of that acquisition. That is a problem because now we come to January 2022, when Hytera was charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States in and then banned from doing business in the United States by President Biden. Yet eight months later, the RCMP bought radio frequency equipment to go into the communications system, giving the Chinese state-owned subsidiaries access to all the locations of the RCMP communications services. There was no public security review of that. These are the things that still fall through the cracks. As I mentioned earlier, Manitoba-based lithium mining company, Tantalum Mining Corp., known as Tanco, was purchased in 2019. Again, the previous minister, not this one, refused to do a national security review of that acquisition. When this minister asked three Chinese state-owned enterprises to divest their Canadian critical mining assets, he did not even include this one, yet it is the largest producer of lithium and cesium in Canada, and all of it goes to China. In 2020, we all know, the Department of Foreign Affairs bought X-ray equipment from a Chinese state-owned enterprise to go in all the embassies. I believe this minister may have been the minister at that time. No, he was not, but it was a Liberal minister, obviously, who said it was okay and did not back off on it until it was raised in this House. In March 2021, as the minister referenced, the minister updated and enhanced the guidelines for national security reviews in the absence of an updated act, although an update could have been done. In January the minister did not even follow his own guidelines when he had a divestiture order that included neither the Neo Lithium Corp. nor the Tanco Corp. In December, I mentioned Hytera and the Canada Border Services Agency. Of course this week we learned, although it is not an acquisition, that the scientific arm of the army of the People's Republic of China is doing research on artificial intelligence and supercomputing in our universities, our 10 biggest universities. They own the IP from that, and it is partially funded by Canadian taxpayers. These are the things the bill does not address. It is a shameful situation that we are actually helping the largest surveillance state in the world, which used that technology not only on its own citizens but also to repress the Uighurs, and we actually helped develop that technology. Of course we know it uses that technology here. In 2017, China passed a national security act, and clauses 7 and 10 of that act require all citizens and all companies to spy on companies and people in the world. It is against the law for a company based in China to not spy and steal technology and information from companies abroad. We have allowed these takeovers to happen in the last eight years under the Liberal government. There are several areas that we need to talk about for additional improvement. There was a really good House of Commons industry committee report, which our leader was the vice-chair of in the last Parliament. Most of the recommendations have been ignored by the Liberal government, even though government members put the recommendations forward. Not only is the Liberal government ignoring the recommendations that the official opposition put forward, but it is also ignoring the recommendations for improvement to the Investment Canada Act put forward by its own members of Parliament. Recommendation number one in that report dealt with state-owned enterprises. What it asked for was that state-owned enterprises for all countries that we deem to be authoritarian or hostile to Canada have an automatic review. The way that is done is by reducing the financial threshold for the automatic review. Right now, that is $415 million. A state-owned enterprise can come in and buy anything it wants in Canada for under $415 million, as my friend from the NDP referenced in his question to the minister, without any scrutiny by the government. Even in my own community, four fish-buying businesses were bought by Chinese state-owned enterprises on the south shore of Nova Scotia in the last quarter. That is important because those businesses set the price of what they get from fishermen. They set what the fishermen get. Through that process and through China's buying two international freight corridors, China now controls all lobster and the access to the departure of lobster from the Halifax airport. None of those transactions would be reviewable under this act. As a result, my lobster buyers would not truck their lobster to the Halifax airport, because China has taken it up. Rather, they would have to truck it to New York and Chicago to get our lobster to Asia. That is just a small part. We know the Chinese enterprises are buying farms. They are buying up all kinds of key assets in this country, and none of that gets reviewed. Therefore, we would encourage and would be seeking amendments to this bill in committee to move that threshold for state-owned enterprises to zero in the act, requiring the minister and the department to follow that. The government did not include any provisions that I can see in the net benefit for that issue of state-owned enterprises in foreign countries actually getting control of industries, let alone a particular asset. We are not looking at the concentration control, particularly of hostile actors going after that strategically. I know there is a provision in the bill that would allow the minister to create a list of targeted industries. We are a little skeptical that the list would be as comprehensive as it needs to be and would reflect a zero-dollar review, given the record of the current government over the last eight years. It has not even sought national security reviews of state-owned enterprises from China when it had the authority to do so on those acquisitions. The bill does not include a provision to actually list countries. Other countries have looked at that. In addition to selected industries, the minister should have the authority, through regulation, to have a list of state actors and countries that we do not believe are advantageous for our economy or are actually a threat to our economy if they continue to try to buy not only our companies but the companies' assets. I will come to this in a minute. The bill would change the process, which I referred to earlier, of the involvement of cabinet. We would like to probe this a little more in committee, but I understand the need. The 45 days has not changed in the Investment Canada Act and there is obviously a need for speed. Therefore, the point that the minister has put forward here, which is that at the beginning of the process, the minister and Minister of Public Safety can determine when that goes in without having to go to cabinet, and this would speed up the process. We believe that is a reasonable thing, but we would want to explore that a little more in committee. However, it is on the other end that we have the problem because perhaps not all ministers of industry are as diligent as this one. I do know, in the short time I have been working with the minister, that he is the most accessible minister I have had a chance to work with since I have been in the House, and he is co-operative. I know he understands and is concerned about what the opposition members think in terms of looking at amendments to the bills, and he takes our suggestions seriously. We want to look at this issue wherein a minister who was perhaps not as diligent would be less involved in making the right decision when it is determined to be a net benefit, or not, or when the research comes back and says it is a national security interest, or not. Whatever the recommendation from officials, we believe it should always go back to cabinet for discussion before the final decision is made. The act does not attempt to change definitions of state-owned enterprises or look at the issue of what constitutes control. One does not have to buy 50% of a company to control a company. Someone can buy small percentages of it, get a number of seats on the board or change management, which Hytera has done. It has changed management in Sinclair and Norsat. None of those things are really looked at very strongly in Bill C-34 and need a little more consideration. One of the interesting things brought up by the industry committee at the time of that report, and I think my friend from the NDP was on the committee, was the issue of subsequent takeovers. A Canadian company may be acquired by a company or an industry that we think is okay, and it gets approved as it is not from a state-owned enterprise. Subsequently, though, down the road, that company can be bought by a state-owned enterprise. There is no provision in this bill to give the minister the power, when that happens, to automatically relook at whether, in that transaction, we should be forcing the divestiture of that Canadian asset from that future transaction of a state-owned enterprise down the road. That is very important, because Russia and China are getting more aggressive at doing these things. They come in through the front door but also through the back door, and we need to be very vigilant about that. The minister mentioned intangible assets. This is a big area. In 2009 it was not so much part of the economy, but it is big now. One of the ways our economy can be harmed is not just through the purchase of a company, but through the purchase or sale of some of its assets. It could be simply that it is not just the taking over one of our mining companies, but that one of our mining companies is selling a strategic mining asset, like a particular mine, to a state player we are not comfortable with. It could be that a database gets sold. It could be that a particular artificial intelligence or knowledge-based patent we have and own in Canada gets sold. That company may still remain Canadian, but more and more companies are looking, when they develop these things, at those assets. Probably the worst example in Canada is Nortel. When Nortel went into bankruptcy, it had the most patents, I believe, of any technology- and knowledge-based company in Canada. The Canadian liquidator's responsibility was to maximize whatever it could get for the assets. China quite regularly goes in and pays four, five or six times what a business is worth. That is what it did in my riding last quarter. It paid five times what the business was worth. It paid $10 million for $2-million-valued businesses, which is way below the threshold. It took advantage of the Nortel situation, and almost all of those patents were sold by the liquidator to a Chinese state-owned enterprise that became Huawei, which is banned now in the United States. It took the government only five years to figure that one out. We helped create Huawei through our weak rules around foreign investment in state-owned enterprises in assets, and not just the companies, so we need to have more study and understanding. We can look at those in committee, and I know the minister is taking this seriously. I see him nodding there, so hopefully we can work with the government to improve Bill C-34. Nonetheless, the bill is an improvement over the existing act and would give the minister and the industry some much-needed clarification. Therefore, for the most part, at this stage, we will be supporting this, but we will be seeking many more amendments in committee. I look forward to hearing from the very experienced member, the shadow minister for industry from the NDP, who has been in the House for a long time and has been on the industry committee for a long time, to see what he proposes, in terms of his speech but also his work in the House. I will conclude there, and I look forward to the debate by all members in the House on this bill, which is very important for Canadians.

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Context: House Hansard - 85 - Jun/9/22