Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's great to be on the committee replacing my colleague Mr. McLeod. Hopefully, he has made it safely back to his riding up north of Nunavut, I believe, if I'm not mistaken.
In terms of the motion that Mr. Poilievre has put forward, and on what I've heard from the opposition parties in terms of investments that take place in the Canadian economy and how our government is helping Canadian businesses to grow, this is a very important discussion.
We think of terms like optionality, which means where a business can locate its place of doing business and where it can hire its employees. Around the world, we know, capital is fungible. We know that capital travels, and it travels to the destination where it can represent and earn a good return, hire Canadians and hire people around the world.
We can look at the case of Mastercard. It had undertaken an investment in a Canadian company. It purchased a small cybersecurity company in Vancouver and decided that it was going to grow that business. It could have chosen to grow this business in other parts of the world—the United States, for example. We know that Mastercard is a world company, along with Visa and other finance-related entities. It chose Vancouver. It chose Canada. I think that's important.
When we're looking at how Canadian companies or global companies invest around the world and we think about optionality, it's important for the Government of Canada to keep in mind why we put in place certain programs to help companies locate in Canada. In the automotive sector, the U.S. states do this very frequently to attract business in those areas. I applaud them for doing it. They create thousands of jobs.
In this case here, our government, through an investment, has guaranteed an investment of over $500 million in Vancouver and will be hiring individuals here in Canada, including Canadians, permanent residents and maybe more people who will have to move to Canada to fulfill that skill set. I think that's important. That can't be lost on this committee. I know that it's certainly not lost on our government how important it is that firms are wanting to invest in Canada.
That's why we have Invest in Canada. We created an agency to help entities locate in Canada and to grow Canada. That's why we created a global talent stream to make it easier for businesses like Mastercard to bring individuals here to Canada to work. We know how important immigration is. We know how important it is to attract high-skilled workers.
When we think of the Mastercard example and the 100 spots for students that will be created from this investment in British Columbia—the province where I was born and was raised before I moved to Ontario—that is very important to consider. Consider the 200- or 300-odd jobs that are going to be created by this investment of $500 million by Mastercard and a few million more from the Canadian government in order to roll out this investment.
I think it's very important to consider that when we look at the world and the global economy. As someone who has worked in the financial markets globally, in Toronto, England and, for the most part, in New York City, I know that countries all over the world are trying to attract and retain individuals. They're trying to attract and retain investment. That's not lost upon me.
If you look at our record over this session of Parliament and into our first term of governing, job growth attributed to investment has been very strong. Yes, I would agree that there has been some pullback in the energy sector due to the drop in oil prices, but we've witnessed this before in Canada, and we are seeing investments. When I think of Alberta, I look at Inter Pipeline and their multi-billion dollar investment that I got to visit, the industrial heartland for the conference that took place.
Look at the petrochemical sector. I'm a big proponent of the energy sector from coast to coast to coast, because it takes place not only in Alberta but in every province in this country. Even Nova Scotia has a robust gas sector. In Newfoundland, you have a robust oil and gas sector.
I think of our investment in Inter Pipeline, which the government undertook to help them undertake an investment of $3 billion plus. If Inter Pipeline wants to come and talk about its investment here at committee, that sounds good to me, because I'm sure it's going to talk about the contributions that the Alberta NDP government made to it and that we helped to fund.
When we're thinking about investments in the Canadian economy that create jobs and how government can partner with that.... I think of other companies that I would love to speak with. Linamar, that we've invested in and partnered with to help grow the automotive parts sector. I think about that and see those good, middle-class jobs that are being created from coast to coast to coast. Yes, we want the private sector to thrive. I'm much like Pierre on the other side; I believe in the free markets, obviously with regulation. I don't believe in crony capitalism. I detest that, if I can use that word. I don't believe in the race to the lowest common denominator, through corporate tax rates or anything to that extent.
I believe in ensuring that we, as a country, adopt policies that attract investment from all over the world. That is exactly what we are doing. We need to ensure when Mastercard, Visa and American Express are thinking about where to invest globally, that they do it in Canada.
