Thank you.
I tend to agree with the member when he says we're fed up with this bill. But I want to expand on a few of the reasons why. I'm not alone in this. I note a number of former Liberals from the other side, such as Mr. Don Boudria, who works as an expert on federal parliamentary procedure for Hill and Knowlton as a strategic communications consultant and as vice-president of the firm. On his blog he has a posting entitled Bill C-300. He happened to be out in the hall before this meeting, and I talked to him. He confirmed to me his concerns about this bill and how it might kill the mining industry. He related the example of Talisman. When Talisman moved out, China moved in. That same scenario could happen again and again.
Also, we had before us the Honourable James Peterson. He spoke against the bill here in committee and said it was flawed in its construction. It is highly prejudicial to Canada's mining sector. We have Bill Graham, another member, co-chair of the Canada-Mexico Initiative, a think tank led by Canadian Foundation for the Americas, FOCAL, which has said that Bill C-300 has to be in the running for the worst piece of legislation before Parliament. These are significant people commenting very negatively on this bill.
If we review the bill, we can see why these concerns would be put forth by even some of the former Liberals themselves. We can start with the title of the bill. I believe it had been suggested and talked about before. In question is the relevancy of why we would want to have something so constrictive affecting only one portion of industry, while leaving other types of industry wholly out of account. If you're going to have a bill on corporate social responsibility, I believe the operative word should be “corporate”. It should apply to any corporation that would be engaged in other parts of the world, not just mining, oil, and gas corporations. I think it was suggested that it could be the service sector, the shipping sector, the forestry sector. I would make the argument that the forestry sector would—