I do not think, when something is strategic, that thresholds are the appropriate lens, because everything is dual use, so it's arbitrary.
Something could be $10 million but extraordinarily strategic for its negative consequences on our security of data or our positive security on a critical piece of creating a vaccine, so I do not think a value.... I think you have to go at your strategic technologies comprehensively. I think you have to have expertise to assess these spillovers comprehensively. I think you have to have the ability to unwind things.
I think we can learn a lot from CFIUS. I think we can learn a lot from what the Australians have done. I think we can learn a lot on the expert research capacities, akin to an economic council, as others have done. Then, on how we implement it in the Canadian framework, whether it's through the Investment Canada Act or through a reconfigured agency, the stakes have become much, much higher in this realm and much, much more complex than they used to be.
The simple spillover structures of the past, the C.D. Howe branch plant stuff that served us so well, doesn't serve us the same way anymore. Sometimes a branch plant is positive, and sometimes it's negative, so we have to build the right tools for the state that's at hand. I think what's so critical here is that this realm has crossed over to security much more than it used to. It's also crossed over to social much more than it used to, whether it's weaponizing misinformation, undermining the mental health of our children or polarizing vulnerable communities. We're not governing for this now.
Where does this get looked after in Canada? That's why you're hearing a fair bit of resonance here on the nature of the problem. There are many ways you can approach addressing it, but you have to acknowledge the problem and ask if our approach is sufficient to do that. It could be done within a ministry, or it could be done in different ways—I'm not absolute on it—but I don't see this current approach addressing the problem we have before us.