Madam Speaker, let me read what my view is in the case of not just Potash but what happens with all foreign investment proposals. It is the third point in the motion today, which states:
ensuring all conditions attached to approval of a takeover be made public and be accompanied by equally transparent commitments to monitoring corporate performance....
That is my view of this particular case and cases to come, because there are going to be more and we recognize that: “ensuring all conditions attached to approval”. So if a company has committed to keeping its headquarters in Saskatchewan, it should be made public, signed on the dotted line, so the constituents have something to hold up in a court of law to say the company broke its promise.
We know that, in case after case, companies acquiring Canadian firms make all sorts of promises. They are in a public relations mode. They are going to promise the sun, the moon and the stars, but when it comes to reality, six, 12 or 18 months down the road, they are not so committed and the government has taken some of those companies to court. Obviously the Investment Canada Act is not working and it would not have worked in the case of Potash. The government was right to refuse the sale. It was right to do this because it could not get this into the public light. Ultimately, it is the public that deserves to know these things.