Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Palliser for his question. I appreciate his clarification, because what he said was investment and ownership, and those are two different words.
I try to encourage many members of the NDP to listen to what economists and people in the country are saying. They are telling the government to build a foundation upon which foreign investment would be welcomed.
I appreciate the fact that the hon. member is speaking about white collar workers and the need to maintain and enhance opportunities for them. Based on the fact that the hon. member is representing the NDP, I am quite surprised that he does not recognize that there hundreds of thousands, in fact millions of Canadians, in my riding and in ridings all across the country, who are not white collar workers and who look forward to foreign investment. The people in our Honda plant, the satellite plants that feed it, and the countless thousands of workers throughout my riding and all across the country look forward to foreign investment because it provides good paying jobs.
Insofar as the hon. member's comments regarding white collar jobs, all he has to do is walk through some of the plants and he will see some of the best and brightest in Canada working in the riding of Simcoe—Grey. If he took a ride down Highway 417 and had a look at Kanata, for example, he would see some of the best and brightest in the entire world.
Some of the white collar jobs could be attributed to foreign investment. The reason they are occurring is because this government and the Minister of Finance have created an atmosphere in which investors from all around the world want to put their money in Canada and we are the beneficiaries.