Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for all of her great work on the industry committee as our critic for industry, and for the opportunity for us to work together.
I and my colleague from Nickel Belt and my colleagues from Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing and Timmins were all affected in northern Ontario by the Investment Canada Act and some of the foreign takeovers. From Xstrata buying out Falconbridge, within a year and a half or two years before the agreement expired, we saw 686 job losses, which dramatically affected my community. We saw the closure of a smelter in Timmins.
Looking at how the Investment Canada Act affects resource-based communities, we see it has detrimental effects when we do not have any type of public consultation and we do not know what the agreements are. That was the problem we had when these businesses were making decisions. When Xstrata made the decision to lay off 686 workers, we did not know what to do in the sense that there was no agreement for us to look at.
That is why today we are calling for transparency, so we know what we are dealing with. When we have no public consultation or transparency, all we are doing is fighting and yelling into the dark and unfortunately that did not do anything for the 686 workers who lost their jobs.