Mr. Speaker, once again I rise to bring forward the concerns of the people of the Timmins—James Bay and Sudbury regions who have seen the absolute abandonment of natural resource policy by the Conservative government and in particular, the debacle surrounding the selling off of international mining giants Falconbridge and Inco. The government sat back and allowed them to be picked up by corporate raiders like Xstrata. Now we have a situation where Xstrata is shutting down all the copper refining capacity in Ontario and shipping out raw concentrate and high-grade resources. We see Vale now shutting down Sudbury, the jewel of international base metal mining for almost a year.
This is a direct result of the negligence of the government and the Minister of Industry in particular, who has been more concerned about promoting cleaning products in his riding than standing up for the resource industries of Canada.
The petitioners are calling on the government to open up section 36 of the Investment Canada Act so that they can see whether or not the minister did any due diligence when allowing these two great Canadian companies to be sold off.