We absolutely must have a system. I'm an entrepreneur and we've always done business in a free market, but as someone said earlier, we're in a unique time that no one could ever have imagined. It's a time of profound transformation and we need the government to step in.
It's as if the California state water company came to British Columbia to make a deal to build a pipeline to get all the water from British Columbia to the south. Everyone would be up in arms. Yet it's the same principle. So we need to respond.
They're going to come and take all our resources, because the demand is so great. It's going to happen, but we have a vast territory and a huge amount of natural resources. We need the Canadian government to step in, because it's strategic, and I still don't see the provinces stepping in.
In my opinion, this is as critical as controlling drinking water. We managed to control oil in the west, and we in Quebec control hydroelectricity. If, tomorrow morning, the Goldman Sachs Group launched an initial public offering for Hydro-Québec, it would be a bit funny, wouldn't it? We would oppose it.
We need to put safeguards in place. I want the federal government to review critical minerals transactions and make sure that we have an integrated industrial strategy, but also that we have veto power over those transactions. The survival of our economy is at stake. We need to control the costs associated with our economy.