Industry committee  Thank you.

Industry committee  I'm a lawyer, but I have had some training in economics as well. Foreign investment provides critical capital to develop our resources. Canadian shareholders or shareholders of Canadian companies would be pretty unhappy if the only people who could buy their shares were other Canadians.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  I'm not sure specifically what you are referring to when you refer to the other ways in other countries.

Industry committee  I think one way to improve it would be to offer greater clarity through guidelines guidance, in the form of guidance, interpretation notes, or whatever, so that there's greater clarity on what—

Industry committee  Yes. Offer guidance with respect to the Investment Canada Act. I'd say this is how we interpret the section 20 factors, because they are so broad that they could be interpreted very, very widely. One of the ways to reduce uncertainty and enhance predictability and make Canada look more welcome is to explain what we mean when we say something in the act.

Industry committee  If you mean on each transaction as it comes along, I think that would be very difficult to manage time-wise, and to a certain extent that debate already occurs in papers. You hear it through the media, etc. People are free to make submissions to the government.

Industry committee  Of course it is, absolutely.

Industry committee  Well, they are monitored. The undertakings are monitored by the government. If you trust the government, then you should trust that they will look at these undertakings. You're dealing with Industry Canada. It's not as if you're dealing with the minister's office directly on that sort of thing.

Industry committee  Well, I can tell you about my own experience. When there has been non-compliance—and I've dealt with situations in which there's been non-compliance through no fault of the investor—then we've worked out alternative undertakings, and we do that in negotiation with Industry Canada.

Industry committee  Are you talking about commodity cycles?

Industry committee  I think there's scope within the undertakings to look at what the plans are. What are the long-term plans of the company? They can be three-year or five-year undertakings, and those can take into account certain concerns you might have relating to that.

Industry committee  That's right.

Industry committee  I just don't know that I have the knowledge base to agree with you.

Industry committee  No, I'm sorry; the company in negotiations with the government does have to indicate what their plans are, etc. There is transparency there. There has to be; otherwise, you can't arrive at plans and undertakings.