Good afternoon, honourable members. It's a privilege to be able to speak to you today.
Lithium is on the list of 31 minerals that Canada considers to be critical to the sustainable economic success of Canada and its allies, and that position Canada as a leading mining nation. The Neo Lithium takeover is not the first time a Canadian lithium company has been acquired by a Chinese firm. I have submitted several examples of Canadian lithium company acquisitions by Chinese firms over the past three or four years.
The Chinese government's “made in China 2025” industrial policy seeks to make China dominant in global high-tech manufacturing, including in batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies. The program's policy aims include mobilizing state-owned enterprises to acquire intellectual property, technologies and assets abroad, with the overall aim to surpass western countries. Securing access to lithium and other critical mineral reserves is essential to the achievement of made in China 2025.
I'm not arguing that this deal should have been denied because the lithium from this company would necessarily have been used in Canada. Currently, we don't have a lithium industry here to use it, but we never will if we allow all of our lithium companies to be sold off and don't have a strategy to build a supply chain at home. If we allow our lithium industry to be sold off, it also undermines efforts to support the development of clean energy technologies that we will need for the clean energy transition.
Part of the problem may be that the government is assessing these acquisitions on a case-by-case basis. As the minister has said, each is assessed “on its own merits”, as it were. The problem with that is it seems to miss the big picture. This takeover is part of a broader pattern of acquisitions that Chinese companies have been making in this sector in Canada.
How can Canada build a lithium supply chain, or any other critical mineral for that matter, when it allows the assets of Canadian companies to be acquired by a country that seeks to cement its dominance in this sector? If each deal is evaluated on an individual basis alone, without regard to what the past record of acquisitions has been or where we need to go as a country to build a strong supply chain over the long term, how can we expect that we will ever be a player in this sector?
I believe the government should review the national security review process and provide more extensive guidance on what types of investments and situations would automatically trigger national security reviews. For example, should acquisitions by state-owned or -controlled companies, especially ones from China, be automatically subject to a national security review? There are also questions about the extent to which our national security review process is aligned with Canada's critical mineral strategies.
That's all I have for today. Thank you very much for your kind attention.