Mr. Speaker, I am glad to participate in tonight's continued discussion that we are having on the question I raised in the House of Commons on May 12 related to Nortel and the takeover by Ericsson. Many Canadians know that this iconic company, Nortel, has struggled in the last couple of years, and the end result is that it went into bankruptcy and to auction. Sadly, we have witnessed the loss of Canadian technology, research and development. With this foreign takeover, I asked the minister that day to look at the foreign investment legislation.
There are a couple of thresholds that are important. There is the threshold of $312 million in terms of net value when the minister must intervene. Also, a new national security clause was introduced. The national security clause is something I have been after since 2002, with China Minmetals. There was a state government of China buying up Canadian oil sands projects, and I opposed that. A non-democratic government was buying Canadian companies.
We finally did get a change to the Investment Candada Act, but it was done in a budget bill. That meant it did not have the proper parliamentary review that would normally be done for a bill. It did not go through the committee. We did not hear witnesses. We did not debate it in the House of Commons, aside from the debate on the budget bill. It is quite an Americanization of our legislation. The Americans have a similar system, where they add riders to a government spending bill that has legislative changes. This is the way the government has done a couple of things, such as the immigration act and now the Investment Canada Act.
Unfortunately, it has now resulted in some weaknesses that we saw evident in this case. This case was interesting. Ericsson had purchased the assets from Nortel for $1.13 billion and then later said the net value was less than the $312 million. To make sure that viewers understand this correctly, it paid over $1 billion for something it later on argued was worth a lot less, including under the threshold of the $312 million. There is a significant difference between the purchase price and what it is saying the net value is. Later on the minister bought that and dismissed it outright.
Second, the minister has dismissed the national security clause. What is interesting is that we had testimony for one day. We, as New Democrats, would have had more testimony, but we were thwarted. I cannot say what happened at in camera meetings, but I can say that Liberals approached me through the leader's office about having more hearings. I cannot say whether I have that support at committee anymore, but unfortunately we only had one day of hearings, which left the pensioners out.
What is really important is that a Canadian company, Certicom, that was based in Canada and bought by RIM in Canada, staying in Canada, had the sale reviewed by the United States government. Meanwhile, in Canada, LTE technology, a fourth-generation tecnology, is going to move ahead of BlackBerry and other devices through the Internet and exchange of information has been dismissed outright. That was disappointing.
I would like to see the government reverse its position, examine the national security clause and make sure this review is going to take place, because we have so many workers at risk. Canadians have subsidized this research, development and technology, and it needs a thorough review before we give this Canadian technology away.