Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise here in the House to take part in today's debate on foreign investment, specifically, the proposed transaction between CNOOC and Nexen.
The Liberal Party understands the need for foreign investment. It is important for the creation of economic growth and for the creation of jobs.
We also note that studies have shown that foreign investment tends to increase innovation in a country. It is valuable and important for Canada. If there is a lot of foreign direct investment out of Canada, that is important to our economy. It creates wealth and jobs at home because there are returns from that. Head offices are based here that are important employers and they create good jobs in Canada.
Our position is not like the position of the NDP over the years. That party has long been opposed to free trade and foreign investment. It has opposed foreign investments over and over again. These days all of a sudden those members are trying to present some sort of a new face, a different picture, that they are not going to look quite so economically irresponsible, but rather make it look as though they are being a little more open to these things. Although they are trying to bury the past, Canadians are not buying it so far, but we will have to wait and see.
The Liberal Party has been asking for weeks for answers from the government about this deal. It is clear the government does not know what it is doing in this case, or else maybe it is afraid to tell Canadians what it is doing, what its plans are, how it is going to manage this, or perhaps both.
As a result of the government's economic incompetence, Canadians really are not confident that they can be assured of being protected by the Conservative government.
Let us remember that the Conservatives inherited the best fiscal situation of any new government coming into office, with a $13 billion surplus in 2006 and they turned that into a deficit before the recession began in 2008. By April and May 2008, the country was already in deficit again. The government entered that year with a deficit of over $5 billion and it had not even begun spending on stimulus at that point.
The Conservatives claim they have had a good record economically. I think most Canadians recognize that is not the case. Therefore, it is hard for them to have the kind of confidence they are looking for that the government will deal with a matter like this properly. For this and other reasons, as well as their failure to be open about this, there is a growing level of cynicism over this deal. The actions of the Conservatives are a major contributing factor to that cynicism and to the concerns Canadians have about this.
The report from CSIS talks about foreign companies, state-owned companies. It does not specify this instance, but it talks about how these kind of deals could create security concerns. That has obviously created a lot of concern for Canadians as well.
The public has expressed reservations about this deal because the government has failed to be open, despite repeated promises. A moment ago my hon. colleague talked about some changes the Conservatives made in 2009 in relation to a bit of tinkering around security questions. In 2010, a year after that, the Prime Minister said that we needed a clearer, more transparent process, yet we have seen nothing since then.
The government sat on this question knowing full well that proposals like this would come forward. We have been hearing lots of talk in the oil sands, in the west and elsewhere, of foreign interests and takeovers. For the government to say that it was not ready, that it did not know it was coming and that it did not even prepare for this, makes no sense.
I am delighted to be splitting my time with my hon. colleague from Malpeque. I look forward to hearing him on this topic in a few minutes.
We even see growing dissent on the government backbenches. There is clear division on that side. Even the backbench members are concerned about where the government is headed. Maybe they too find it awfully difficult to see where the government is headed on this because it has not been transparent. Apparently there is a dispute about this even in cabinet. The member for Calgary West seems to be the poster boy for opponents to the deal, but he certainly is not the only one to question what the government is doing on foreign investment.
It is something Canadians have been wondering about for years, ever since the fiscally incompetent crowd over there took power in 2006, because during that period we witnessed a hollowing out of the natural resources sector in this country. Lots of former leaders in that sector are now gone and owned elsewhere. Think about aluminum; think about steel; think about metal. Big companies in these sectors, important Canadian companies, have all been gobbled up by foreign owners. The companies, since then, have failed to live up to their commitments, and the government has not held them to those commitments. The government lacked the fortitude to enforce the commitments that were in those deals.
How can Canadians have any confidence in what the government will do with the next deal, that it will enforce any conditions that may apply to the CNOOC Nexen deal? Of course it probably should not surprise us that the government lacked the fortitude to enforce even the basic promises made in some of those deals when we know about the government's own record for keeping promises. Seniors remember the broken promise from the government and the Prime Minister on income trusts. Voters remember the fixed date election law, and that promise was broken. All Canadians these days are paying more and more because of the broken gas tax promise. The Prime Minister said whenever gas prices rise above 85¢ we will get rid of the tax, which would alleviate the challenge for Canadians paying for that. That is another broken promise.
We have a Prime Minister who has made a habit of failing to live up to his promises or to keep a promise, so how is he likely to ask others to do so? It does not seem very likely. In fact, part of the problem we are dealing with today is a direct result of the Prime Minister failing to keep his promise to review and update the Investment Canada Act and to provide a clearer process. There are a number of ways of doing it. One option is by making amendments to the net benefit test. Another is to ask if there is some other process we should use entirely. Do we use one that still leaves it to the discretion of the government in the end, or do we find something else that removes that discretion? That is what we ought to be discussing.
One of the reasons we are supporting the motion today is that we believe it is important to have a public discussion about this. It is important to have members of Parliament at committee discussing these issues. As my good friend from Wascana recently pointed out, the six-step test for net benefit in section 20 of the Investment Canada Act remains a very foggy test. It is not all that clear. In any given case, net benefit is what the Prime Minister decides, despite all the things listed in section 20. It changes from deal to deal. As we saw with the potash deal a couple of years ago, we know decisions are based on political expediency. It was clear the government wanted to go ahead with that deal, but it finally backed down.
We do not have a clearly defined set of regulations. Is that the way to go? Do we need a different process that takes it out of the hands of the cabinet? Or do we want to leave some flexibility in government on these decisions? That is the kind of thing that a committee of Parliament ought to be studying. I had a motion passed last spring after waiting quite a while, adopted by the industry committee to look at this, but we are still not at it and we have a situation in this Parliament where committees go in camera so the government can avoid dealing with things it does not want to deal with.
This is a case where the Prime Minister said in 2010 he wanted to deal with this, he wanted this study. The Minister of Industry said a year and a half ago that the committee ought to be looking at this. Well, who has a majority on the committee? Has the government really allowed the industry committee to study this question, if it has not happened? It has the majority. It controls the agenda and yet the committee has not studied this issue. We know who is in control of that.
The unfortunate truth is that, because of the Prime Minister's failure to keep a promise again, there will be a lot more potential takeovers that will be decided on this very sketchy basis, and that is economic mismanagement to add to the Conservatives' fiscal mismanagement. The sad truth is that the government has not done its homework on this deal even though it had plenty of time to prepare for this kind of situation, the same way it failed to do its homework on the northern gateway pipeline proposal as we heard from former Conservative minister Jim Prentice this very week. He talked about how they totally failed to consult aboriginal communities, how they have not lived up to their responsibilities.