Mr. Fast, thank you for the question.
Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to respond.
I would say, to repeat my testimony, that I don't find that the decision not to conduct a formal national security review was appropriate in the circumstances of this acquisition, the value of which has been reported in the media as close to a billion dollars. I would say in particular it seems to me some of the guidelines that have already been set out by the government as to how they want to approach this issue, quite apart from promises made to create things like an economic security strategy, to beef up the resourcing of national security review and to create a critical minerals strategy.... You know, these are all important promises, but as I said in my testimony, I think there's a significant and I fear perhaps a widening gap between the promises and their delivery in reality.
I would just, in response to your question, make one particular point, and it also references some of the other testimony the committee has heard. I don't regard it as terrifically significant to a national security review that Neo Lithium possessed a significant mine asset in Argentina and was engaged in a pilot plant project for extraction.
I think it's very important—and this references my own comments about the need for a broader, more strategic, more future-oriented approach to national security reviews—to understand what's lost when we allow a Canadian company, or a company that at least trades in Canada and is based in part in Canada, to go into the hands of a Chinese SOE. We're losing future capabilities. We're losing intellectual property. We're losing technological know-how, and we're losing an unknowable future, which I think all the witnesses you've heard from will agree is going to be very important to Canada's economic development and to our transition to a green economy. In that context, I think the narrowness of the approach apparently taken in this review process was fully on display and shown to be inappropriate.