Industry committee  Thank you, Chair. Thanks to the committee for this invitation. The question of whether companies within strategic industries have been devalued or have lost value would be easier to answer if we had a clearer idea of what constituted a “strategic” industry, and there, let me pi

Industry committee  No, it depends on the sectors. I can see that some governments with strategic objectives would want to come in here, whether they're authoritarian or not, take over a Canadian company, and then not act in Canada's interest. To me, that really is the question. That's the key thing

Industry committee  Thank you very much for that question. I'll go straight to the heart of what I was trying to say. I lost track of my text there for a minute. As you know, any investment can be scrutinized for national security reasons. What I was saying is that in the current context, those r

Industry committee  Yes, Mr. Leblond. Do we have time?

Industry committee  I wish to say that focusing on foreign ownership per se is not exactly the issue. We've had lots of Canadian investments that went bust all by themselves, including in foreign countries. We have a long list of those. The question is whether the Canadian or foreign investor follo

Industry committee  I do think national security should be the focus. One of the things we also said, though, is that as we use that national security lens to look at proposed investments, which by the way could be an investment of any size—it could be one dollar by anybody, so that takes care of

Industry committee  That's correct, yes. It's to give more specificity to the guidelines, which may also include being more welcoming. Right now the statement, I believe, mentions food security and medical, and that's quite understandable, but it also leaves the door open to more scrutiny of pretty

Industry committee  Yes, for sure. I think it was mentioned that other countries are on that track as well, but they are being more specific, and we're not. That's why a lot of my comments are about whether we can be clearer about what we need.

Industry committee  I would support anything that sustains Canadian industry and cleaner energy in particular, so to the extent these high tariffs prevent the development of that industry, absolutely, I would support reducing or eliminating tariffs, generally speaking.

Industry committee  We're not here to do China any favours. Some exchanges, some investments even, might still be in the interests of both, and we should cautiously pursue those while restricting others, absolutely.

Industry committee  The short answer is that it would depend on the sector. As you know, some sectors are not going to recover for a long time. If you took the sectoral approach and you figured that sector was so crucial and strategic to the Canadian economy that, if it was acquired by a foreign ent

Industry committee  Sorry.

Industry committee  They do work together, so I was very interested in Monsieur Gagnon's presentation for that reason. It's not like you're a foreign company here and you can run roughshod over Canadian law. As Monsieur Gagnon mentioned, the Canadian Securities Administrators has recently made refor

Industry committee  I agree. I think as Patrick mentioned, of course if the government has an investment in IP or in a company, absolutely they want to make sure it grows for the benefit and advantage of Canadians. That's why we're developing the ecosystem. Canada is really great at attracting talen

Science and Research committee  Thank you, Chair. I'm Daniel Schwanen. I'm the vice-president of research at the C.D. Howe Institute. I thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee. Commercialization can be seen as the point where innovative ideas come to fruition to create or sustain economic