Mr. Chair, I think it is the role of the committee because the Investment Canada Act falls within our purview, I first raised non-democratic governments having the ability to purchase Canadian companies. That was done through the sale of Petro Canada when the Chinese government was purchasing Canadian shares in Canadian oil companies. Ironically, it wasn't seen as proper for Canadians to own their own oil in this country. China Minmetals Corporation was the catalyst for a review of that. This committee played a role in that. That's why part of the Investment Canada Act has that qualification under national security interests.
I think a meeting on this is fine. It's appropriate. Certain things can or can't be disclosed. The threshold has been dropped over the years as well. This committee has studied the Investment Canada Act several times.
It does lead to further discussion on whether we need to review it. The last time there was any discussion was during a omnibus budget bill, so if you go back to this committee's role in the past, not only was it raised under the Investment Canada Act, but later on when the Investment Canada Act was worked on, it was done as separate legislation.
In subsequent governments, both Liberals and Conservatives had the Investment Canada Act as part of their budget bills, so this committee has not vetted it since it was altered. I would be interested in a meeting on this just to find out how much more that process played itself out. I think that's our role as committee members, because the act has been changed a number of times without the committee hearing from any witnesses. It's like a review process. I don't see anything nefarious. It would be a good probe for us to find out whether there is an interest to look at the Investment Canada Act, given the threshold has dropped, the national security....
We have other issues too, and I'll summarize. An example would be private equity firms. We don't know who owns or has invested in them. They could be kingdoms. They could be other types of investors. We have no idea who's buying Canadian companies.
We have questions about some Montreal companies that have been bought. We have a series of things. This one stands out because it's gone through this current process, and I think it would be worth at least dipping our toes into it to find out how things are going by the way the act was changed, and it was changed without this committee's review. It was changed in a budget bill, so we don't know the mechanisms, and whether they're working or not.
I think those are the facts. I'd like to see if it's working for Canadians. It would be rather interesting because this committee...and I'm not trying to be overly political on this, but it's practically a reality. When we go to omnibus bills that include other legislation, it takes away the committee review and the full independence of the review of that issue. It takes away from business and public representation, from all those who would provide testimony and come back to us, as they would on any other bill. The repercussions are all that goes to Finance.
Inadvertently, we have ceded ground to the finance committee that does a pretty cursory flyover of issues in a bill, as opposed to doing the good scrutiny of legislation that committees used to do.
For that reason, it's worth at least a meeting to look at this, and I would move the motion at the appropriate time to have a vote on it. Let's be done with it. We won't be able to get to certain things because agreements have to be signed. That's the law, and that's fine, but at least we'll get enough information to know whether we need to do more work or no work.