Industry committee  I believe we looked at the current thresholds, and we found that in fact there were a lot more companies active in there. You didn't have the same kind of consideration where you had 15 companies and therefore a relatively small number, so that if you had two or three transactions, fundamentally the tenor of the sector could move from being principally private sector oriented to state-owned, and that was the overwhelming condition that made it exceptional.

Industry committee  Absolutely. There are two provisions in the budget implementation bill dealing with the timelines. The first one deals with more or less a technical fix. As I noted, the national security provisions are quite new. One of the issues around the original drafting of it is that it said that basically, once the minister completes the national security review, he would only have five days to complete the net benefit evaluation, and if he doesn't complete it within five days, it's deemed to be approved.

Industry committee  I'm not 100% certain, but fairly sure they've not been modified, that in fact they were part of the Foreign Investment Review Act that was rescinded in the early 1980s and the Investment Canada Act was created. I believe they were transposed from the one act to the second one, but if it would please the committee, we could come back with a firm answer on that.

Industry committee  That's correct.

Industry committee  I wouldn't characterize it as another restriction, but you're correct that the exceptional language of the policy statement in the fall would not apply to a mining company.

Industry committee  The “exceptional” only has not been defined.

Industry committee  You're asking specifically what the impact would be of each of these changes on the global capital availability and—

Industry committee  I'm saying it would be very difficult to answer that question from an economic perspective. We have looked at it from a policy perspective. We have a track record of similar changes that were undertaken. We believe, for example, that it's consistent with the policy direction that the government announced in December.

Industry committee  Absolutely. I'll walk through the review process. The review process has three distinct stages. There's a 45-day pre-review stage, in which the Minister of Industry, in consultation with the Minister of Public Safety, determines whether an investment could be injurious to national security, and the GIC can order a review of the investment.

Industry committee  Certainly, we could put together that list.

Industry committee  Is that a question? For the policy review process, we did work, obviously, with our minister's office in terms of developing these policy amendments. In terms of the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office, we had no direct interaction.

Industry committee  I don't know who made the ultimate decision on it.

Industry committee  The changes that were announced by the Prime Minister in December and all of the policy work that was undertaken leading up to that was undertaken in the context of cabinet confidence, so I'm not at liberty to talk about what else was or was not on the table for policy changes.

Industry committee  Are you talking about a specific provision in the act?

Industry committee  It would be extremely difficult to forecast and interpret what kind of impact these will have. As was noted at the beginning, these are all discretionary authorities.