Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent question. It is absolutely ludicrous that it is advantageous for a Canadian producer to set up shop abroad in order to have more ready, cheaper access to the complete Canadian market than it is if the same producer were located in Ontario or British Columbia. It is a scandal. I do not see where it is in the interests of anyone in Canada to encourage companies to do that.
We must get together and realize that everyone is losing. If a company in Ontario which specializes in the production of a good and can produce it really cheaply and sell it at a low price to a government in Quebec, we are all better off when this takes place rather than when a producer in Quebec which produces at a much higher cost gets to supply the government with that product. Why? Because we know there are also producers of specialized products in Quebec that can produce more cheaply than anybody in Ontario. So when the Ontario government wishes to buy that product, it too will then be required to buy the cheapest, not just from the local producer in Ontario.
Both Ontario and Quebec residents would be better off because the products consumed by the government of those regions in most cases would get the product at a lower cost. The employment effects in one province would be matched by the employment effects in the other province.
Why this simple idea has not penetrated the minds of politicians in Canada is beyond me, even though I have sat here now for three years and talked to politicians.