Bear with me while I flip some papers here; two committees in the same two hours is a little challenging.
We have CPC-7. Bill C-34, in its current form, doesn't compel the minister, in my view, to actually conduct a national security review. I know we've had some discussions and questions about this.
Mr. Schaan said there are three stages. What we're looking for is that the minister, in some cases, rather than having the option of asking for the more detailed reviews in the second and third stages, “shall” do it in certain circumstances. My understanding is that the words “may” and “shall” in legal terms have significantly different meanings. The purpose of this amendment, in other words, is to compel the minister to send certain types of investments to a national security review rather than giving him the option.
Part of the reason for that, as I've expressed before, is my concern that several recent acquisitions by companies controlled directly and indirectly by China—the Communist Party of China—were allowed to go through with what I would call, in a non-technical term, a fairly superficial national security review. I am thinking primarily of the acquisition of the telecommunications company in Vancouver called Norsat. It was bought by Hytera, which also owns the Markham-based company Sinclair, which subsequently was contracted by both the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency to provide services and equipment to those agencies after the United States and President Biden actually had banned Hytera from doing business in the United States. It has actually been charged in the United States with 21 counts of espionage.
While that's not an acquisition in terms of the procurement, the whole idea that Hytera itself was able to buy important telecommunications equipment, with the minister having the ability to say that he “may” do it, so he'll just do the basic level of security and not the deeper dive into a state-owned enterprise.... We need to have a greater depth of certainty in the national security review in those cases.
The other case, which I mentioned at a previous committee, is the acquisition of the Tanco mine in Manitoba by a state-owned resource company in China, based out of Beijing, I believe. It acquired the only lithium-producing mine at that time in Canada—obviously critical to the EV strategy going forward for our country. The result is that all the lithium being mined at that mine in Manitoba—our only one—is actually going to China to develop the battery technology in China, rather than being used here in Canada. Again, that went through under Minister Bains, with just a cursory first-level review as he was not compelled to go into the more detailed review.
I know there are examples that go further back and that people would probably like to talk about. Mr. Masse and I have talked about Nexen, for example, and the oil sands, and the list goes on.
We feel that in those circumstances it's essential that the government and cabinet have the benefit of that detailed security review and that it shouldn't be an option. It should be required, and it should be a “shall” rather than a “may”.