Industry committee  I wouldn't know. I know for certain that it's happened the last two years in a row.

Industry committee  Sorry—at least three in a row.

Industry committee  It's challenging to do a review of the foreign investment regimes of other countries, principally because many of them are focused on national security. Canada is not completely alone, but we're in a relatively small crowd in terms of having an economic review desk. Trying to find out what happens behind the scenes of a national security review in the United States is extraordinarily difficult.

Industry committee  Yes. The United States has an exhaustive list, and many other countries put out lists of sectors that are of concern.

Industry committee  Well, for example, in the U.S., there's the defence industry, and I think ports, and all kinds of transportation infrastructure. In terms of the U.S. list, it's actually sometimes easier to find sectors that aren't there. They have a very exhaustive interpretation of national security.

Industry committee  It is through the Minister of Public Safety. The way the act spells it out, it gives the minister the ultimate decision-making authority on whether there is a national security concern. He makes the decision on the “will be” and the “could be” that I mentioned in the two different phases, but it's obviously heavily reliant on the analysis of both the security and the intelligence community, who report to the Minister of Public Safety.

Industry committee  Reservations have been taken for the Investment Canada Act and for the review mechanism, within WTO for sure, I think, but within NAFTA, and we had a precursor of it, the free trade agreement. It's also permitted for in our foreign investment promotion agreements, the FIPAs that have been done.

Industry committee  I'm sorry. One more time, sir...?

Industry committee  If they are acquiring a Canadian business house with this, the requirement is that they be reviewed.

Industry committee  The exceptional nature of the oil sands did not set up any sort of intake process different from that under the Investment Canada Act. The notification review process is still conducted along the normal lines, just with this additional policy clarification around how the minister will weigh those types of transaction proposals.

Industry committee  It will be via regulation, both on the national security side.... I would be speculating as to whether there would be one or two regulatory packages, but there would be one set of regulatory changes to implement the national security provisions in the act and a second one around enterprise value.

Industry committee  To the contrary, not only is it not defined, it's not an operable concept in the act at all. I always thought that the concept of strategic industries or strategic resources was used more in public commentary to ascribe an importance to an economic asset, and I think it makes sense there because it's easy to communicate.

Industry committee  To the extent that the public debate in Canada has an array of concepts around it?

Industry committee  Concerning the term “exceptional”, I would make the point that we undertook an analysis, and the Prime Minister did reflect in his speech what “exceptional” meant and why the oil sands were identified as a sector requiring this additional policy statement. The analysis was on the number of market entrants, the ease with which companies come into and out of the oil sands sector, and the small number of companies actually in the sector right now.

Industry committee  Yes, we did that analysis as well. There are two factors about the mining sector. First, many of the companies are actually quite small, lower than the threshold, so a lot of them would only be reviewed under national security grounds. Our analysis showed that many wouldn't even be captured, and second, there—