Industry Committee on Aug. 7th, 2009

[Marie-Josée Thivierge]

I don't believe that, and I don't want to speculate on this, so I could come back to the committee in terms of the nature of the international negotiations. It was more about some principles being set and countries making sure that, whatever was the starting point of all of this, everybody agreed to it. After that, international law and trade obligations are such that the government, in changing any of its policy, would factor in trade obligations. But every country moving to the billion dollars, that was certainly not—

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Can we get back from you a comparison of what other nations are doing?

[Marie-Josée Thivierge]

Sure.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It's information that we would normally get during a review process that's very interesting and important for us to have, like what Japan is doing, what Germany's doing, just to have an idea of where they're going to be at in four years.

What's coming to light here is that this is one of the most important technological breakthroughs—this LTE patent that we're hearing about today—but it barely meets the end threshold in four years in what we have. It's just kind of an interesting part of the whole story here. What we have to look at, as a governing body, at the end of the day is what triggers a review. This is the licence for a breakthrough, but it would barely break the threshold if it were four years, if this had been the billion dollars right away.

[Richard Dicerni]

Here is a quick point. The quantum has to be considered in the context of the legislation to which it applies. Different countries may have different triggers, may have different modalities to review foreign investment. We can give you the numbers on a quantum basis, but it has to be looked at in the broader context.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, can you share that with us? These are the things we would normally have as we go through these legislative changes, which I think are important for us to understand as parliamentarians, which now we're in a black hole on.

Really quickly—I know I'm running out of time here—if Nortel gets away with its argument and claims this transaction is only worth $149 million, and it later on hives something off, hives another thing off, and another thing off, do we start adding up to when they reach $312 billion to trigger an Investment Canada Act review, and does the review happen on everything or just the last thing that triggered the review? This is different from what I've ever seen before. So what happens in this scenario?

[Richard Dicerni]

As the act works, it's the investor; it's not the seller.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Okay, so it's a loophole.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Masse, for those questions. They were helpful.

Ms. McDonald, Ms. Thivierge and Mr. Dicerni, thank you for your evidence.

We're going to go in camera momentarily. We're not going to suspend; we're going to go in camera to further discuss the study that's on our order of the day.

I'd ask members of the public to leave the room so we can go in camera for the next 15 minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]