Bill C-34

National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act

An Act to amend the Investment Canada Act

This enactment amends the Investment Canada Act to, among other things,
(a) require notice of certain investments to be given prior to their implementation;
(b) authorize the Minister of Industry, after consultation with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, to impose interim conditions in respect of investments in order to prevent injury to national security that could arise during the review;
(c) require, in certain cases, the Minister of Industry to make an order for the further review of investments under Part IV.1;
(d) allow written undertakings to be submitted to the Minister of Industry to address risks of injury to national security and allow that Minister, with the concurrence of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, to complete consideration of an investment because of the undertakings;
(e) introduce rules for the protection of information in the course of judicial review proceedings in relation to decisions and orders under Part IV.1;
(f) authorize the Minister of Industry to disclose information that is otherwise privileged under the Act to foreign states for the purposes of foreign investment reviews;
(g) establish a penalty not exceeding the greater of $500,000 and any prescribed amount, for failure to give notice of, or file applications with respect to, certain investments; and
(h) increase the penalty for other contraventions of the Act or the regulations to the greater of $25,000 and any prescribed amount for each day of the contravention.

National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Madam Speaker, as the member is fully aware, I did make reference to three countries but the purpose of those references was to say that our regulations are to be fine-tuned every so often. The reason for that, as I tried to emphasize in my comments, is that we face a world that has a changing global threat landscape.

In this particular case there are a few aspects of this bill that would require that we draw on the expertise of not just one minister but several departments. However, that is a good thing because we need to make sure that the regime we currently have in place is robust and flexible and will allow our authorities to thoroughly protect Canadians.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, foreign investment has generally been based on the size of the transaction and/or the sector in the transaction. It has now come to the point where size or sector does not actually matter, in terms of security review and the sensitivities involved. Small companies can create security difficulties for Canada. Sectors one would never have thought of can create difficulties for Canada, particularly dual-use sectors.

I am interested in the hon. member's comments as to whether this bill addresses this dramatic change in what should be available to or reviewed by the Canadian authorities.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Madam Speaker, yes, my hon. colleague has rightly emphasized that our regime, as a general rule, has thresholds in place that allow us to screen investments coming in. In other instances, it is sectoral because there are various sectors of the economy that are vulnerable to falling into the wrong hands, if you will.

These have been ongoing changes. I made reference to changes that we made in 2021 and 2022. This does not mean that if we bring in some of these new provisions, they are necessarily replacing all of the old safeguards that were there previously.

Our intention has always been to have the gold standard when it comes to screening investments coming in. This will ensure that we will continue to lead the way in having a good, robust system in place, which does evolve as security threats around the world evolve.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in the House.

Before I really dive into my speech on Bill C-34, I just want to acknowledge Marilyn Bouw, the president of the Springfield Agricultural Society, for hosting my wife and me at their annual banquet. She is a tremendous advocate and supporter of agricultural communities in her riding of Springfield and broader.

I also want to mention Mayor Myron Dyck from Niverville, Manitoba, who also hosted my wife and me this weekend, together with his wife Shari, at the Niverville Heritage Centre annual fundraising banquet. The Niverville Heritage Centre does a tremendous amount of good work in the community, especially supporting our vulnerable seniors.

I thank Niverville Heritage Centre very much.

The interesting thing about what came up this past weekend at both of those events was the issue of the carbon tax. Folks at both venues talked to me about the carbon tax vote that we had here earlier in the House today. They said, “How is it going to go, Mr. Falk? Is this a confidence vote? Will this actually bring us into an election?”

We know that the Liberals want to quadruple the carbon tax and we know that, already, Canadians right across the country are experiencing significant increases to the cost of living and affordability is top of mind for almost all Canadians.

They asked me—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am struggling to find any kind of link between what the member is talking about and the bill that is before the House right now. We have had a number of opportunities to discuss the subject that he is trying to discuss but, right now, we are talking about this bill.

Perhaps you could encourage him to get back to the subject at hand.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

There is a little flexibility during the speeches, of course. I remind members who are getting up to speak on bills before the House that it needs to be relevant to the bill. They should mention either the bill or what is in the bill.

The hon. member for Provencher.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, that is very good advice. I was paving the pathway to this bill on how this carbon tax is negatively impacting investment in Canada.

The Liberals today had an opportunity to reduce the cost of living for Canadians from coast to coast to coast and failed to do that. They were joined by the Bloc. The Bloc members had an opportunity to speak for Quebeckers to make sure their cost of living was also being reduced and they failed to do that.

The members for Winnipeg North, Winnipeg South, Winnipeg South Centre, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, who are Liberal members, could have reduced the cost of home heating for their constituents, but voted against this motion to expand the carbon tax pause to all Canadians. It is very disappointing that their constituents cannot even count on them to represent them adequately here in the House.

Let me now dive headlong into my speech and carry on with that.

We have seen before where the current government subjects a bill to being discussed, even this critical one here, and this is something we should have seen long ago. It requires legislation of course on the whole issue of Invest in Canada, but this legislation presented by the government lands so far from what is needed, so far from the reality of the problem that it seeks to address, that it is really difficult to see a common-sense solution here. This is the kind of stuff we continually get from the Liberals. We see this on their approach to the environment, immigration, the economy, guns, drugs and the list goes on.

There is a common series of steps the Liberals go through when they encounter these various problems. First, they deny there is a problem. Once that stops working for them, then they start to blame the Conservatives. Then they start blaming Canadians. Finally, when they run of out people to blame, once the PM's wizards and the PMO finally recognize that something needs to be done before even the CBC starts dumping on them, then they put something like this forward. However, it takes all of those things to happen before the Liberal government takes steps to address real issues. When they do finally present something, it is unremarkable, as members will see later in my speech.

For years, the Communist dictatorship of Beijing has been taking advantage of Canadians, of our weak acquisition laws, Canadian industry and our proprietary technology. Why is that? Part of it seems to be the bizarre fascination that the Prime Minister has with China. We all remember his comment about admiring Beijing's basic dictatorship, though at the time few thought he was naive enough to believe that and throw open the doors to Beijing, but it turns out that he actually has that fascination.

When the former environment minister visited China in 2018, she too gushed over China's leadership on climate change and its ability to “scale like no other country”. In her address to Boston's Northeastern University this past May, the Deputy Prime Minister “said the fundamental question of our time is: 'Does capitalist democracy still work?'” I think it would be better if the minister were here working for Canadians, but that is what she said.

She stated:

That is the question being posed around kitchen tables, in my country and this one, as parents wonder if our children can count on capitalist democracy’s essential promise of a future more prosperous than our present.

These comments, of course, raise the spectre of what she considers a viable alternative. That would be China's basic dictatorship perhaps. To read between the lines, her thought process seems to be that Canada's current economic woes are not the result of her government's incompetent management, but rather the fault of capitalism and democracy.

As one journalist recently noted, if we are talking about what passes for capitalism and democracy in Justin Trudeau's Canada, not unlike those of China, where capitalism has come to be characterized by close—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is sometimes what happens when members are just reading speeches that are given to them that are written by staffers who perhaps do not know the rules of the House, but the member just said the Prime Minister's name in the context of it being “the [Prime Minister]'s Canada”.

Perhaps the member should inform those who are writing his speeches how the rules of the House work so that this does not happen again.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I am sure the hon. member cannot prove for sure who has written the speech.

The hon. member mentioned the Prime Minister's name. I would ask him to please be careful and ensure that he is not mentioning the name of parliamentarians who sit in the House. I know that does slip from time to time and I think it is done on both sides of the House.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would ask that you ask the member for Kingston and the Islands to withdraw his comment.

I know it is the practice on one side of the House to just read canned speeches, but I know this member, and I know he wrote that speech. I know he writes all his speeches, just as most of our members do.

I would ask the Speaker to kindly ask him to withdraw that comment, which was meant to put down one of my colleagues on this side of the House.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I have indicated that hon. members should be careful with what they put in their speeches, and they should also be careful when saying whether somebody has done something or has not done something.

I am not sure if the hon. deputy government House leader would like to rise to apologize for that. I understand he is not willing to do so.

I would ask all members to please be careful as it causes disorder in the House, which is not the way we want to function here.

The hon. member for Provencher.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, to carry on, in a so-called capitalist system where the Prime Minister picks the winners and the losers and stacks the deck to ensure a select few friends get rich while everyone else is pushed to become reliant on government for everything from housing to basic income, the general trend, and I believe the endgame of the government, will inevitably collapse.

Likewise, so would a democracy that has been left unprotected and consistently undermined by the actions of the Prime Minister and his friends in Beijing. Beijing had spies, scientists with ties to China's bioweapons program, in our National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, which is one of our most secure facilities. Now, they are nowhere to be found.

The Prime Minister took the former Speaker of the House, the person who sat in Madam Speaker's chair, to court and sued that person to prevent the truth about what was happening at the Winnipeg National Microbiology Lab with those Chinese spies from coming out.

There is hacking and espionage against Canadian infrastructure, academia and industry. The list goes on and on. It is always China. What has the government done so far? In eight years, what has the Liberal government done? It has done nothing up until today, unless of course we include cash for access with Chinese billionaires and donations to the Trudeau Foundation.

However, now the Liberals have a plan, which is Bill C-34. What is the solution government members have put forward? Are they proposing to ban Communist Chinese acquisitions of Canadian companies or to take China to the World Trade Organization? Would they expel Beijing-run spies and state police from Canada? No, they would not. Their solution is more government, more bureaucracy and specifically for more power concentrated in the minister. This would not be the Minister of Public Safety or the Minister of National Defence, but with the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. It is bizarre. One cannot make this stuff up.

In almost case with the government, it is the same minister who created the problem tasked with fixing the problem. In this case, we have the minister of industry, who I actually like. I wish him all the best in his leadership bid. In 2017, before his time, the minister of industry failed to request a full national security review of the acquisition of B.C.-based Norsat International and its subsidiary Sinclair Technologies by Hytera Communications, which is owned by the People's Republic of China.

Then, in December of 2022, under the former public safety minister, the RCMP awarded a contract to supply sensitive hardware for its communication systems to Sinclair Technologies, which was then owned by a Beijing company and major supporter to China's public security ministry. Then it was revealed, also in December of 2022, that since 2017, the CBSA had also been using communications equipment and technology from Hytera Communications.

Hytera has been charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States and has been banned by President Biden from doing business in the U.S., but it has not been banned here in Canada, not under the Liberal government. How did the minister respond to these acquisitions? He thought it was cool.

Let us look at another example. In March 2021, the minister updated and enhanced guidelines for national security reviews for transactions involving critical minerals and state-owned enterprises, but in January 2022, he failed to follow his own guidelines when he fast-tracked the takeover of Canadian lithium company Neo Lithium Corp by, once again, Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining Group, without a national security review taking place.

Then, in November of 2022, the minister ordered three Chinese companies to divest their ownership of three critical mineral firms, but guess who he forgot to mention? It was Neo Lithium. The list goes on.

I am not sure what is more astounding: that it is always China with the Liberal government or that the minister can put forward this legislation with a straight face. How can he expect the House or Canadians to trust him to solve this problem when his own lack of oversight has been so instrumental in creating the problem?

As I wrap up, I will say that the member for Kingston and the Islands always asks whether there is nothing positive in the legislation, and if we cannot say one positive thing. Even he needs reassurance that the Liberals are not completely dropping the ball.

Therefore, I am happy to inform him and his—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The member's time is up. We will come to questions and comments in a moment, and he will be able to add his additional comments during that time.

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Spadina—Fort York, Public Safety; the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot, Carbon Pricing; the hon. member for Nunavut, Indigenous Affairs.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, that was interesting to listen to. There was some real revisionist history there. The member opposite referenced political relationships with dictators, and I am going to pick up on that.

It is no secret that the member for Carleton has hitched his political wagon to former president Trump. We know of former president Trump's relationship with Putin and his affinity for the government in Russia, and we know that the member for Carleton has been eerily silent on his support for Ukraine.

Is that an indication of his lack of support? Can we chalk up the member's silence on his support for Ukraine to his relationship with former president Trump and, by extension, his relationship with Putin? Can the member explain that and connect the dots for us when it comes to relationships with dictators?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member asked a good question.

I ask why we continue to allow Chinese state-owned companies to invest in Canada when even President Biden, who we often consider as being at the far left or the extreme left, has banned Chinese state-owned companies from operating technology in the United States. The question really is why, here in Canada, are we not seeing the same thing?