Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. He is a Liberal, but I cannot be too mean to him because he is from Cape Breton Island. My family had to leave Cape Breton to work in the gold mines in Timmins. Those immigrants built an amazing resource that has succeeded all across northern Canada. It was built by hard-working people. We have built industries that are the envy of the world.
Then the Conservative government came along. The last time it did anything with industry was the Avro Arrow. It saw these great mines like Falconbridge and Inco and said, “Let's sell them out to some corporate raiders and let's not get any kind of commitments”, because it believes blindly in the power of capital.
We have seen a devastation in our regions because of the lack of understanding on the government's part that there is a difference between foreign investment and foreign takeover.
We have always supported foreign investment because it has built industry, but what we are seeing under the Conservative government, which is in Bill C-9, is a change in the rules on oversight with foreign takeovers. We are leaving industries like our northern mining industries, the oil sector and telecommunications open to foreign takeovers that are undermining our ability as Canadians and as regions to maintain good, strong jobs in this country.
I would like to ask the hon. member from Cape Breton, would he not work with us to stop this turnover and deregulation move by the government against our regional industries?