I'm thinking of an incident in the United States. One of my concerns is that you may have unintended consequences in terms of security.
As you all are aware, when a company in Dubai wanted to take over the security aspects of the seaports in the United States, they were legally allowed to do it until Congress got really upset about it. They were worried about security and, basically, the image of this. They were going to move forward a bill, but apparently Mr. Bush said at the time that they would veto anything. It didn't turn out that way. The buyer just backed off.
One of my concerns is that you don't have the “I don't like you clause” in here. I'm just thinking of someone like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela wanting to invest in a $400-million company here in Canada to get his foot in the door and then spreading whatever he wanted to from there. Is there not a factor in terms of security concerns in this regard?
I have another question that links with that. When you review a company or its investment, do you check its board of directors, the history of the company, its practices in other countries, its human rights record, and its environmental record? Does any of that come into play?
You talked about state-owned enterprises as well. China has a lot of state-owned enterprises that are trying to purchase anything they can in raw materials and so on. But their human rights record--and everything else--is sometimes questioned. Is there not a fear that you can have unintended consequences by raising that limit and not doing a thorough check in terms of security, human rights records, environmental records, and so on?
Finally, are there any other countries in the world that have systems similar to what we have when it comes to foreign investment? The reason I ask is that the government is involved in a lot of free trade negotiations right now, such as the FTA with the Americas, the Canada-EU talks, and Canada and Japan. Investment rules and changes would have to be part of those discussions, I would assume. What role do the trade deals play in what happens with your work?
Thank you very much for coming today. Take all the time you want. We have until 5:30, by the way.