Fisheries Committee on June 1st, 2023

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try not to take up my entire question period asking the question.

Thank you for your responses.

Mr. Burns, I was reflecting a bit on some of the responses you provided before. I don't know whether this is going to be a personal question or not.

Basically, I was thinking about the fact that you were speaking to some of the reputational challenges that may occur to moving forward in this direction on changing the foreign investment around our fisheries and so on. At the same time, what we're seeing is a foreign extraction of our public natural resources. I mean, this is a finite natural resource.

Wouldn't it be to our benefit to take the time needed to restructure our licensing policies to ensure that the benefits are going back into our communities and local fishers here in Canada instead of being extracted into other countries?

[James Burns]

Your point about restricting licences is not something that would fall within the remit of the Investment Canada Act, but what I can say regarding reputational risk is that Canada is seen as a preferred destination for foreign investment, and that's partly because we have a secure marketplace. We have a degree of investor certainty that is put in place by having strong, robust marketplace frameworks. If one were to selectively choose—“we will be doing this in this sector, we'll be doing this in a separate sector and we'll be doing this in another”—it would undermine that sort of wider national consideration for a secure and transparent marketplace.

I would simply point out that it's something that would be front of mind for us, because our goal as a regulator is to ensure we have clear and transparent processes for review that allow commerce to happen in a fair and consistent fashion.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Six seconds are all that's left, so that's not much.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today and taking the time to appear for us. I think we got some good information that came out today. Thank you very much.

I'll move on to a piece of committee business. The witnesses are free to go if they like, if they'd like to depart.

For next week, on June 5 we're scheduled to spend the first hour receiving a DFO update on the government response to the 2019 report on B.C. licensing and to then spend the second hour on drafting instructions for the foreign ownership and concentration report. I'd like to ask the committee if they would like to push the foreign ownership and concentration drafting instructions to the following Monday, June 12, as the second hour of that meeting is currently vacant.

Would that be acceptable to everyone?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mel Arnold]

Okay. That's great. We've consulted with the chair's office and the clerk, and they've said that there are no problems with this. With that, we'll move the drafting instructions to the 12th.

Is there anything else?

Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.