It's because they're the lowest bidder.
I looked at Hytera's financials, because Hytera claims to be publicly traded on the Beijing stock exchange, which I'm sure is a stock exchange with the highest ethics and security in the world. The Minister of Public Safety or the head of the RCMP, like anyone else, could google it like I did. It took me about five minutes. It does require you to understand some basic financial definitions of numbers, like what a return on investment is, what a capital expenditure is or what a balance sheet or an income statement is. I'm not sure every one of the ministers can do that.
Let me underscore that this investigation took 10 minutes, and I don't have the entire security apparatus of the government of Canada available to me. It showed me that Hytera does not make a profit. In fact, they lose money every year. If the profit motive is not the issue that drives that company, what could possibly be their other motive in wanting to own telecommunications companies in Canada? They are winning with low-cost bids and underbidding companies in Canada that have to bid and make a profit. I have not had an opportunity to ask that question.
It is baffling that the Minister of Finance.... When she comes here, maybe she could answer why we think that's a good expenditure of taxpayers' dollars, because they now have access to the Canada Border Services Agency. They have access not only to the RCMP's telecommunications; they have access to know where our communication facilities are and what equipment is in the Canada Border Services Agency.
I know there's an old poetic saying that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. Perhaps I have a little mind when it comes to consistency, but I expect consistency. This government is consistent, I can tell you, because while we search in the “Finding Freeland” episode or perhaps the “freeing Freeland” episode, I'm hoping the PMO is freeing Freeland so we can find Freeland. I'm hoping the Prime Minister's Office has done that.
I can tell you that the Minister of Industry is consistent with what we've heard from the Minister of International Trade, who I know sits just behind him in his seat in the House, where she said basically, “Oops—not my problem that I gave sole-source contracts.” Do you know what Minister Champagne said? “Oh, sorry; that's the other guy, not me. I know I served in cabinet with him and I know I was around the cabinet table.”
As we've heard, collective decision-making is part of the parliamentary system. Each minister is responsible for the decision that other ministers make, and we understand that this is the way it operates, but in the guise of collective responsibility, we have a collective lack of responsibility: They blame the other guy.
I'm sure we're going to hear that because Stephen Harper did not bring in a bill to prevent Chinese state-owed enterprises from buying Canadian companies, it's not the Liberals' fault as a government that they didn't do a public safety check on these companies. It's not their fault, because if only Stephen Harper had brought in legislation to make sure it was mandatory to do it, then they would have followed the rules. Because they've been in power for eight years, they certainly couldn't be responsible for not thinking in the last eight years that this was something they should do.
In fact, for public security options in any acquisition over $512 million by a state-owned enterprise, the minister has an option, every minister has an option. As Brian Mulroney said to John Turner in the 1984 election debate, “You had an option, sir.”
Canadians deserve better. You could have gotten rid of the old Liberal ways. You could have brought in a new standard of ethics and have said, "I'm responsible for this and I will make sure it never happens again, and every single state-owned enterprise of China will get a national security review because, first and foremost, I care about that". But why would you if you were aware for two years that China had been interfering in Canadian elections, had actually been intimidating the family of a member of Parliament and you did nothing about it?
Apparently, that's Stephen Harper's fault too. It's Stephen Harper's fault that, eight to 10 years ago, he didn't pass a law that compelled these Liberals to actually say that when a member of Parliament is intimidated by a foreign country you're compelled to tell them about it. You can't just sit on it and benefit from that in an election; you have to actually do something about it. In the eight years this government has been in power, they chose not to do that.
We know that every sparrow that falls from the sky for this government is Stephen Harper's fault. I would like to lay claim to that quote, but that quote comes from a member of Parliament named Roy MacLaren, a good Liberal and a former trade minister under the Trudeau era, who during the free trade debate in 1989 said, in a rare show of honesty for a Liberal in the House of Commons, that we will blame every sparrow that falls from the sky on Canada's free trade agreement. You will remember that the Liberals opposed free trade back then, and they ran an election against it in '88, they ran an election against it in 1993, and they said that they would tear up the free trade agreement and they would get rid of the GST.
I have a question for everybody here. Do we still have NAFTA? Now it's called CUSMA, USMCA, NAFTA 2.0. Apparently, they're quite proud of that, the NAFTA. The last time I checked I think we still have the GST.
It pains me to say this, but after the 1993 election, there was a Liberal minister who had integrity. I'm shocked I'm saying this about the Right Honourable Sheila Copps. Sheila Copps was Jean Chrétien's deputy prime minister, a long-time Hamilton, Ontario MP. In the 1993 campaign, like every other Liberal, she promised to get rid of the GST. Then, shortly after that election, there was a summit of the three amigos, as they were called, the president of the United States, the president of Mexico and Jean Chrétien as the newly elected prime minister. You would have thought Jean Chrétien had invented NAFTA and invented the GST and embraced it, so in a rare move of integrity—although it wasn't a very risky move given that Sheila Copps had represented that riding for many years in Parliament, for many years in the provincial legislature, and her father had been the mayor of Hamilton, if you didn't know that—she resigned her seat. No, she didn't resign her seat to go back to some private practice, she resigned her seat to run again in the by-election.
This was a big risk for somebody who had represented it federally and provincially, and whose father had been the mayor—a very big risk. I'm not sure the last time a Tory had run that riding, but she did it anyway, and cost the taxpayers' money, but she is the only Liberal who resigned her seat. You'll be shocked to learn she won the seat in a by-election. You know what? That is a minister who, according to this Treasury Board guideline and the open and accountable guidelines for ministers of 2015 for this government, actually lived up to her commitments.
To get back to this primary issue of how does Parliament—and I know everybody watching out there is asking this—hold a minister to account, I can tell you that I know.... I can hear the Liberals here in the room telling me that they want to know how Parliament holds a minister accountable.
This Treasury Board document, for the sake of the translators, is called “Meeting the Expectations of Canadians: Review of the Responsibilities and Accountabilities of Ministers”.
I will refer the translators to page 15. Section 2.2 is entitled “Parliament's role in holding the government to account”. This, perhaps, will be guidance for those ministers that are now—