Thank you, Chair.
I want to start by asking our finance officials about Canadian investments in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Our party has long opposed Canadian entry in the AIIB. At the time of initially expressing this opposition, we were aligned with the Obama administration, which saw this bank as Chinese state controlled and as a tool of China's state foreign policy. We didn't see any point in having Canadian taxpayers fund that.
According to the latest edition of the public accounts, Canada has shares worth about $1 billion U.S. in AIIB, some of which are paid in, although most of which are not paid in and are callable. The government has just recently announced suspending activity with the bank in response to some of these criticisms, which are in fact long-standing but have since been repeated by someone who used to work for the bank. In the midst of suspending activities with the bank, though, large portions of Canadian capital are already in the bank.
I wonder if you could clarify what it actually means to say that Canada has suspended activities with the bank, given that a substantial amount of taxpayers' money is already in the bank and presumably continues to be available to the bank for its use.