Absolutely. There are two provisions in the budget implementation bill dealing with the timelines.
The first one deals with more or less a technical fix. As I noted, the national security provisions are quite new. One of the issues around the original drafting of it is that it said that basically, once the minister completes the national security review, he would only have five days to complete the net benefit evaluation, and if he doesn't complete it within five days, it's deemed to be approved. So it put the minister in a very tight situation.
Effectively, the purpose of this provision is to change that, to move it from 5 to 30 days, so the minister has sufficient time to complete the net benefit review, sufficient time to implement any provisions coming out of the national security review. For example, as I mentioned, if there was a requirement for a divestiture or a sell-off of an asset, it would provide additional time for the minister to feel comfortable that the Canadian business and the foreign investor had a way to implement that condition.
The second one is dealing with the actual national security timelines. As I mentioned, there are three phases. There's the pre-review, the review, and then the GIC review process. Right now, the minister does not have the authority to extend any of those periods, except for the first one. For the first one, he has the power in the act and under regulation to take a 25-day extension when he issues an order, in that first phase only. He can't take additional time in the second one, and he can't take additional time in the third phase. The proposal would provide him with the authority in regulations to prescribe extension periods for the second and the third review periods.