Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to take a bit of time here to talk about my main concern.
I want to make sure that all those who are watching understand why we're spending so much time on CPC-2 and this amendment. It's because of my concern about China's growing influence. It's not only military. The main threat we're seeing in western countries is an economic takeover. In some ways it is more powerful to try to take over assets and find the wiggle room in our rules. We're a generous and open country, as are most western countries. We like to play fair and by the rules.
In our meeting 71 on May 3, Dr. Patrick Leblond, the associate professor at the graduate school of public and international affairs at the faculty of social sciences at the University of Ottawa, appeared as an individual. He said, “Any state-owned enterprise, regardless of where it's from in the world, should notify an acquisition to the minister. The minister should then decide whether this flies or not, and again be able to justify, if there is a decision, to not investigate” it.
With our amendment and the subamendment we're quite narrowing it. There are lots of countries—most countries, I suspect—that have some form of state-owned enterprise, either at a national or subnational level. Some of them get and make acquisitions extraterritorially. I'm not aware that our state-owned enterprises in Canada have done any.
I assume by the way this bill was drafted and the government's proposed amendments that the government doesn't believe that we should be reviewing all state-owned enterprises for net benefit and what the motivation might be, regardless of where they are. Is that correct?