Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am going to start by doing what Brian Masse did and table a motion, as I undertook to do at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage this week. I am going to essentially repeat the following motion here at the committee, which was tabled in the other committee by my Conservative colleague, Rachael Thomas:
That, considering the Auditor General report tabled on Monday, March 27th titled “the Progress on access to high-speed Internet and mobile cellular services lags behind for rural and remote communities and First Nations reserves”, the committee invite Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, to testify before committee as soon as possible for no less than 2 hours.
We agree that given our committee's workload, “as soon as possible” will probably be in the fall. However, I thought it worthwhile for this motion to be included in the committee's discussions, because Liberal Chris Bittle had raised the fact that it was maybe more up to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology to debate it. In my opinion, it is important for this motion to be included in our discussions at some point, so I am giving notice today, without debating it.
I will now come back to the witnesses and the question of transparency, which is important.
Mr. Lee, foreign investments funds obviously have to be able to continue doing business. However, the global situation can change. For a country, some nations may be allies one minute, but become enemies or non-allies the next. We can agree that the situation with China and Russia has evolved very rapidly over the last five years alone.
Should the way Canada accepts foreign investments change? What options do we have for remaining open to allowing these funds in, but also protecting our national security? Does the current Investment Canada Act protect Canada well, given the growing hegemony of certain countries?