Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again on a very important issue, the Investment Canada Act.
I asked a question in this chamber on October 26 related to BHP's takeover bid on PotashCorp. I want to thank the great Canadians who supported our campaign, and especially the Saskatchewan NDP that fought so hard to make sure this takeover did not take place.
It is important to note that the Investment Canada Act is the trigger point on how to do these types of acquisitions and is the backstop for the investment as to whether it is of net benefit to Canada. That legislation is so poorly crafted that it has created serious vulnerabilities for Canadians, not just in terms of the companies that have been built up and basically been sold off, but also, on top of that, the jobs, value-added jobs in particular, that we have.
I want to point out that the present government is responsible for that poor legislation because it added changes to the legislation in a budget bill, so it did not get a chance to go to committee. It did not have a chance to hear from Canadians, be it the business community, the workers or others who are experts in this law, and have that input to look at the changes that were going to be made.
That denial of the proper democratic process is like Americanizing our legislative process by attaching what in the U.S. is called a rider bill to legislation. It has very much been at the expense of our business community and our economic development.
One of the key things that needs to be recognized is that the minister is now talking about reviewing the Investment Canada Act, especially after an NDP motion and debate has already taken place.
The reality is that the government is responsible for this hollowing out that has taken place and it has done so without even consulting the business community that wants to be consulted on this. There are many economists and other business people who want to be part of a process to modernize the Investment Canada Act.
Back in 2003, I fought vigorously against China Minmetals, because here we had a non-democratic state government that was actually going to take over Canadian companies. I thought that was wrong.
How do we have that process? How is it that Canada cannot own its own oil shares through Petro-Canada? The previous Liberals actually sold our last bit of shares in Petro-Canada. We actually lost money on that because a month later it went up incredibly. On top of that, a non-democratic government can actually own Canadian oil projects, which it is now purchasing across the land.
I want to be clear that the government has a responsibility to modernize the Investment Canada Act through legislation to make it more clear, more accountable and to have more net benefits. When we look at Stelco, Inco and Vale, we had all those terrible deals where we had tons of problems from those takeovers at the expense of working class Canadians. It is unacceptable and the government is responsible for those things.