Thank you for that question. It is an excellent and eye-opening question and I hope that the Canada pension plan and other provincial plans, including the Quebec pension plan, will listen to this question.
Yes, you are absolutely right. The Quebec pension plan has investments of around $2 billion to $3 billion in Chinese companies associated with either the genocide directly or forced labour, and there is a list of companies the Quebec pension plan invested in, and we know which company they invested in and we know what those companies are doing.
It's exactly the same at McGill. McGill University invested nearly $100 million and we identified seven companies directly associated with the Uighur genocide. Some companies helped to build surveillance technology for the Chinese government and some are part of the integral joint operational platform. Some companies are part of birth prevention measures that the Chinese government implemented on Uighurs, and for that reason it is alarming.
We met with the Canada pension plan board and they basically defended their position by saying that they did not invest in China or a country, but rather that they invested in companies. The problem is that those companies are under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party. They are receptive to every demand of the Chinese government. For that reason, there isn't any difference.
We sent letters to the pension boards, the federal and provincial pension boards. They are not receptive. They are not responsive, and there's a strong need for the Parliament of Canada to do something to address this issue. Otherwise if there is any madness—and I can simply expect that to happen—if any madness happens from Xi Jinping, if they just press the button to invade Taiwan, all investments will be wiped out. We are talking about nearly $100 million.