Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Clearly there's a lot of interest here in ensuring that pension funds are not investing in companies in the People's Republic of China that are either partnered with the People's Liberation Army or engaged in gross human rights violations.
Two U.S. administrations now have issued executive orders banning U.S. investments in a number of companies in the PRC under one of two rubrics, either gross human rights violations—such as the case of Hikvision or Huawei, which is engaged very intimately in the propagation of a genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang—or being closely aligned with the PLA, which is obviously threatening a lot of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region.
Here is my question for you. About 10% of pensions in Canada are federally regulated. With respect to those federally regulated pensions, if the Government of Canada wants to ban pension investments because of human rights violations or because of proximity to the PLA, what is the right instrument for the Government of Canada to use to implement a ban on certain federally regulated pension investments in certain companies in the PRC? Does statute currently provide for those powers through regulation, or does new legislation need to be introduced? What instrument, if any, is available to do that?