Mr. Chair, I would first like to thank and say hello to my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, for whom I have great admiration, as I say publicly all the time.
Mr. Deltell, I have great admiration for you, because you make your contribution as a parliamentarian. I know the figures you are thinking of, my friend, but I will tell you that the facts on the ground are different. I have never got as many calls from companies that want to invest in Canada.
I'm going to give you a few examples, and not read off a litany of them.
Dow Chemical has decided to build in Alberta. This is the first carbon neutral polyethylene plant in the world. A blue hydrogen production plant is also being built in Edmonton.
We are now seeing a battery industry in which things are going to be speeding up, my friend. You are seeing only the tip of the iceberg of all these foreign investments that are coming, and that will result in the creation of an industry that didn't even exist in Canada. We are building something that never existed before, but that will generate profits for the next 20 or 30 years. The same thing is happening in the aerospace industry.
I am aware of the figures. I can tell my colleague that in collaboration with the Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development, I am doing everything possible to be present on all platforms, because I think that stability, predictability and the rule of law are very important today.
You will see that the 2021 numbers on attraction are going to be pretty impressive. You know, as do I, that the proximity of resources, green energy, renewable energy and workforce talent that we have, from one end of the country to the other, contribute enormously to attracting companies to Canada.
We need only think of BASF. I would point out to my colleague that the people in that company had their choice of going where they wanted. I went to meet the president of the company in Germany a year ago, and they decided to come to Quebec because of what we are able to offer.