Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the member is concerned about partisan rhetoric occurring in the House.
It was not a foreign takeover. Our government will continue to support foreign investment. It builds jobs and stimulates the economy.
I will quote Andrew Coyne, who wrote an article recently in the National Post, because we keep hearing that it is the government's fault and that we could have done something.
He stated:
EMD is not a Canadian company and never was. Caterpillar bought it from a pair of American private equity firms in 2010; they bought it from General Motors in 2005, who bought it from its Ohio-based founders in 1930... Caterpillar didn't buy the London plant. It bought the whole company... EMD never received any subsidies from the federal government; certainly not since Caterpillar bought it. Indeed, looking through the hundreds of pages of “grants and contribution” in the Public Accounts, it may be the only company in the country that didn't.
The Harper visit... was to promote a tax break for the purchasers of locomotives, not the manufacturers. The visit occurred in 2008, two years before the Caterpillar purchase.