Mr. Speaker, I have a short question. The minister repeated the mantra we have heard so often from him and his colleagues that $1 billion of direct foreign investment results in 45,000 jobs. However, the point is that 97% of foreign investment in 1997 came into Canada not to create new jobs but to buy existing Canadian companies.
Would the minister simply confirm that 97% of all foreign investment that came into Canada in 1997, $21-plus billion, was to purchase existing Canadian companies and not to create new jobs?