Thanks very much.
Lloyd's logic is completely wrong.
I was on the veterans affairs committee for many years. The Liberals were in opposition. I can remember when Peter Stoffer was in opposition and all they did was question the decisions that public servants had made, and I was along with him questioning the decisions they had made. We're just talking about a different department and the decisions they make. That is your job as a member of Parliament, in my opinion.
Yes, I agree that they can't tell us all the details and dotted lines to all the different companies, because that would be under their non-disclosure agreement. However, we can question the officials on how they are satisfied with their decisions on whether or not this is a state-owned enterprise and on how the department ascertains that. That is completely within our realm as committee members, and they're not giving away any secrets about how they do that.
The other thing that's interesting is the question how it is that this company has basically backed off any acquisitions in the United States but was able to conclude one here in Canada. Again we can't get the specifics, but maybe the department can help us understand how they look at this.
I'm quite happy with Brian's amendment. It's fine. We're trying to deal with a serious issue, which is companies that try to maintain that they're a private company or whatever they want to describe themselves as, but quite likely, when you look at all the dotted lines, are owned in part by the Chinese government.
The vulnerability this leaves us with is that when the banks—whether it's the government or a bank that's run by the government, however the enterprise is set up—decide they need their money back, they want their money back. We've seen examples of that in the United States as well, in which the Chinese want their money back. I think they're having to go to get money from Russia or other countries; I don't know where they're getting their financing from.
These are the problems, and especially in this case we cannot leave people who are in nursing homes high and dry because China decides they can deploy their capital somewhere else and get a better rate of return. When we're talking about health care and about some very murky ownership structures, that is the job of this committee. I'll leave it at that.
I accept Brian's amendment, because it's trying to accomplish what we're trying to do, and yes, this is a more generic way of going at it. I'll leave it at that.
