Industry Committee on May 13th, 2021

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

If you could share with us some concrete measures to incentivize private industry, to incentivize, I believe you mentioned, hedge funds, to actually invest in innovative technologies, what would those concrete recommendations be?

[Mark P. Mills]

Well, let's clarify. [Technical difficulty--Editor] hedge funds with private equity, which is a different category of private money. Hedge funds have a notorious role because they hedge investments, so to speak.

For most innovation, obviously there's a role for government. This is a very old debate, and a very important one, especially in modern times. [Technical difficulty--Editor] last 80 years since World War II, we've talked about how governments can play a role. However, the essential answer is because of the nature of risk in doing something different than everybody else is doing today, if you want to reward the innovator, you have to give them the latitude to do it, which means they have to find money. It's always still the money.

The risk-taking is taxed. Let's just use a specific example. If you tax risk-takers the way you tax non-risk-takers, you get fewer risk-takers. It seems unfair to reward the risk-taker for the outsized gain in lower taxes, but what you don't see is behind the scenes, for every successful company, there are hundreds that fail. As we all know, it's an old truism, but it's a true truism. Therefore, simplistically, if you want more of it, tax less of it.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Okay. That's fair enough.

You also touched on rare earth minerals. You talked about how, 30 years ago, North America was essentially leading the way, but things have really changed both in the U.S. and in Canada in the past several decades.

Do you have any specific recommendations on that front, given how critical these minerals are?

[Mark P. Mills]

It's a pretty easy, generic one, but it's a very tough one to implement.

It's the same point. Mine sites, if you assume no regulations, still take a very long time to establish. They're physically demanding pieces of engineering. Everything we do to delay that makes it riskier, so risk capital goes to where it's easier to build the mine faster.

By and large, what that means today is that the epicentre of new mining development is Africa, largely through Chinese investments. We all know why. It's because of the far too lax, in my view, environmental regulatory environment.

What we're doing is trading two extremes, essentially no regulations versus too much regulation, so the mines are opening up where there are no regulations, so to speak.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Mills.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

That ends our third round.

First of all, I thank the witnesses for being here today. That was excellent testimony.

Thank you so much for your statements.

Mr. Leclerc, I am with you: go Habs, go!

I'll say goodbye to the witnesses and I'll ask the members to stick around because I'm going to go over what we have in the cooker for the next couple of weeks, to see if we can work out something so that we can get everything done before the House rises.

With that, thank you very much to the witnesses for being with us today. If you have anything you would like to submit, I know Mr. Dreeshen had suggested a YouTube link. If you'd like to submit it to the clerk, the clerk will then circulate it to the committee members and we'll be able to watch those videos.

Now I feel as though I failed science class and I just got a refresher course, so thank you so much.

We will let the witnesses leave and then go with our plan for the rest of the session.

Members, thank you all for sticking around. We have a few minutes. I just want to connect because we have a couple of things still outstanding, one of which is that we have some witnesses who we invited to speak at the COVID recovery meeting and they weren't able to be with us during the times we had booked.

We have some witnesses who would like to appear on May 27, which is the Thursday when we come back after the riding week, so we will allocate that meeting for those final witnesses on the green recovery study.

As you know, we also have three reports that we need to hopefully finalize and table in the House before the House rises. I've been working with the clerk on that. As we are still in public, obviously we can't talk about what's in those reports, but we're trying to make sure that we can finish the session tabling those reports but also dealing with the piece of legislation that was referred to our committee yesterday, Bill C-253.

I have a plan. This committee has been pretty good about collaborating to get us across the finish line. I'll have the clerk circulate that once we kind of agree to it.

Next week is a riding week.

The following week, on May 25, we will invite the sponsor of the bill, MP Gill, to come and present for the first hour on Bill C-253, and then we'll go in camera and look at affordability and accessibility in telecommunications, because we will be receiving the second draft of the report probably by the end of this week. It will give us some time to look at it then.

On May 27, we will have the last meeting on green recovery.

What we'll then do is spend the first hour of each of the remaining meetings dealing with Bill C-253 and the second hour finalizing any reports. We need to get those reports finished by June 10 so the analysts can do what they do to get them back to me so I can table them by June 18.

In a perfect world, and I think we can do this, we can probably get everything done before the House rises for the summer. Again, I don't know how many witnesses people will want for Bill C-253, so I want to give us a bit of wiggle room. However, I think we can actually do this.

I want to put that proposal out to the committee members, just so you know also what you have on your record, and get some feedback if you all think this is a good plan.

I see some thumbs up.

It also gives us a bit of flexibility in case we need to allocate a little more time for a specific report versus another one. I want to just lay that out. I think we can do this.

Mr. Lemire, you have the floor.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for suggesting this.

I think this is absolutely in line with our objectives. I understand that we have a little wiggle room. If we can all agree on a version of the report and if we are able to adopt it in five minutes, and we can then immediately go on to the next report during the same meeting.

I have a question for the analysts.

Do they think it would be possible to have a first draft of our reports on the aerospace industry, on the acquisition of Shaw by Rogers and, obviously, on the green recovery?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

I will turn to our analysts on that. I don't think it's possible to have it before the end of June, but there might be one that's possible.

I'll turn it over to Monsieur Lord.

[Francis Lord, Committee Researcher]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We believe that the committee's reports on the aerospace industry, the acquisition of Shaw by Rogers and competitiveness in Canada as well as the green recovery will be ready when you reconvene in September. We are assuming that the committee will not meet during the summer.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

From what I understand, they will all be ready at the same time.

Wouldn't it be possible to give ourselves a bit of leeway in order to be able to present a report that would be ready earlier than we thought?

There is a strong possibility of an election being called during the summer, which would bring the session to an end and would greatly impede the adoption of all these reports. I would like us to take that possibility into account. Otherwise, the proposed plan A is also fine with me, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

In order for us to be able to present a report before September, the report would have to be finalized before then. Our analysts are working terribly hard for us and we are very grateful.

I do not know if it will be possible to have a report ready before September. However, we will be able to continue our studies when we resume in September, as we have done during this session. If there is a change, I will certainly advise you.

Are there any other comments on the plan?

I think we can do this. I'll have the clerk send it around with a little game plan. If we're disciplined, I think we can get everything done.

Good? Perfect.

With that, I want to thank everyone.

MP Baldinelli, thanks for that catch at the start. I was going right to the rounds. It was a little bit of a news day today, so I was a little distracted.

Thank you, everyone, for your time today.

To the analysts, of course, thank you for your great work.

Mike and everyone in the room, thank you.

I would also like to thank the interpreters.

With that, I call this meeting adjourned.