Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to shorten my speech, which will be in English. I will, however, welcome your questions in both official languages.
My overall concern here is to ensure a level and competitive playing field for foreign direct investment in Canada and that the investment we see here may not meet that test.
It appears that Paper Excellence may have been and may still be in violation of Canadian law by effectively circumventing Canadian law. That may also be the reason why Paper Excellence continues to be intransparent and not forthcoming about its foreign resourcing, nor about its ownership structure.
I'm concerned about the structure behind the company, but I'm also concerned about the pace at which it has acquired a significant share of a Canadian business here. If another business acquired 21% of, say, the telecommunications media or the airline business in Canada, and we had the sorts of questions that we have here about financing and ownership structure, Canadians would be up in arms, especially in Quebec.
For a purportedly foreign entity that may be connected to China, there are interesting questions here. Why were transactions allowed to proceed? Was this in the public interest? Do these transactions comply with a particular competition law? Do they comply with Canada's foreign investment laws?
It reveals that Canada's posture is yet again inadequate in terms of identifying, disrupting and possibly deterring potentially malicious intent in terms of foreign investment. It's also another reason why this government needs to get the financial crime agency of Canada up and running.
I provide a comparison here with the United States, where, if this investment had proceeded, it would have required a proactive disclosure to the committee on foreign investment, known as CFIUS, which is in the Treasury, where the office of investment security is housed, along with the financial intelligence unit. We would have had a proactive disclosure of foreign funding, and that would have flagged suspect resourcing, ownership, reporting and control structures.
What we need, then, in this country is something that mirrors CFIUS. Canada needs proactive disclosure of foreign direct investment in Canadian companies and real estate by means of a Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 and the political will to deter possible deliberate misrepresentation or obfuscation of foreign financial flows into Canada, as well as control of Canadian companies.
This case raises Canada's potential vulnerability to foreign economic interference and manipulation across a vast spectrum.
Thank you for your attention.