Colleagues would know that one thing that is lacking today is undertakings. The Americans deal with national security on the basis of undertakings. To say, for example, “We will allow a certain transaction to go forward, but,” for example, “you're not going to take contracts from the defence department” or “you're not going to do certain things that would be harmful to national security.”
The Americans use that very much, in the sense that they would allow a transaction but then it would have a set of undertakings to say, “You can do this, but you can't do that; you can do this, but you can't do that.”
Today our system is binary. Either we approve or we don't. Sometimes, in the interests of Canada, you would say, “I want to approve it, but,” for example, “you're going to keep a majority of Canadians on your board” or “you're not going to deal with sensitive technologies” or, for example, “you're not going to share technology with foreign parties.” That's part of the challenge that we have under the act, that we cannot impose undertakings, which I think our American partners do all the time. That is really something that is lacking today.
To be honest, when I say, “for future ministers”, I think they would want to have that in their tool box to say, “That might be good, but,” for example, “you're not going to do this or that.” Today we can't, so—