44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 6, 2023 11:00AM
- Nov/6/23 4:26:41 p.m.
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There is a little flexibility during the speeches, of course. I remind members who are getting up to speak on bills before the House that it needs to be relevant to the bill. They should mention either the bill or what is in the bill.
The hon. member for Provencher.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is sometimes what happens when members are just reading speeches that are given to them that are written by staffers who perhaps do not know the rules of the House, but the member just said the Prime Minister's name in the context of it being “the [Prime Minister]'s Canada”.
Perhaps the member should inform those who are writing his speeches how the rules of the House work so that this does not happen again.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would ask that you ask the member for Kingston and the Islands to withdraw his comment.
I know it is the practice on one side of the House to just read canned speeches, but I know this member, and I know he wrote that speech. I know he writes all his speeches, just as most of our members do.
I would ask the Speaker to kindly ask him to withdraw that comment, which was meant to put down one of my colleagues on this side of the House.
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- Nov/6/23 4:33:02 p.m.
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I have indicated that hon. members should be careful with what they put in their speeches, and they should also be careful when saying whether somebody has done something or has not done something.
I am not sure if the hon. deputy government House leader would like to rise to apologize for that. I understand he is not willing to do so.
I would ask all members to please be careful as it causes disorder in the House, which is not the way we want to function here.
The hon. member for Provencher.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place to speak to Bill C-34, which has been before the House for some time. I must state my great regret that time allocation has been applied to it before any member of the Green Party has been allowed to speak to it.
People know that when someone rises on the government's side and says it has had 20 speakers, 20 witnesses and so on, it sounds exhaustive. However, the rules in this place are intended to allow a proper debate of every bill that involves all members with an interest in it. Members will know that I have long decried, as mentioned earlier in this debate, the use of written speeches. This allows more members to speak to a bill who have a strong interest or background in the subject matter.
I think in this case we have the reverse. We have a really important piece of legislation that got all the way through second reading without any speakers from my party, and then it got into committee, where we are not allowed to be members. Then amendments were made, and here we are at report stage already and I have a lot of concerns. Without further pause to reflect on my regret that this is the first time I have been given a speaking opportunity in this place, let me speak to the Investment Canada Act and to the revisions that are made in Bill C-34.
It is very important that we, in 2023, take a new lens and look at what we mean by foreign investments of concern and what that means for national security and national sovereignty. I am concerned that the bill leaves cabinet decision-making more as a discretionary matter and that there will not have to be a cabinet decision unless there is a recommendation from the minister.
Triggering a foreign investment review has never been easy in this country. Let me just reflect for a moment on two specific cases. I think one will be better with the changes made under Bill C-34, but I hate to say that, even at this late hour, I am not certain this bill would improve the situation on a more complicated matter.
Let me speak to the first one. It was a few years ago that a takeover was proposed for one of Canada's largest engineering firms, Aecon. It had gone quite far. It was reported in the business pages that Aecon was to be purchased, after being approved by Aecon shareholders, by a People's Republic of China company, CCCI. It was moving along without concern.
It was in 2018 that I was the first member of Parliament to raise on the floor of the House of Commons a concern: Did we not need a national security review before one of the largest engineering companies in Canada became the property of a company based in the People's Republic of China? It has been a particular concern of mine for some time because, back in the Harper years, a decision was taken by cabinet alone with no vote. I want to repeat that for new members of Parliament, as it will be shocking to them. We never had a vote in the House of Commons on the approval of the foreign investment promotion and protection agreement, otherwise known as a FIPA, between the People's Republic of China and Canada.
It gives corporations and state-owned enterprises from within the People's Republic of China superior rights, if they are a Canadian company, to complain of changes made by regulation, complain of court decisions or complain of any number of matters where a corporation feels that its expectation of profits has been somehow reduced. This originally emerged as an investor-state provision in chapter 11 of NAFTA back in the day when it was NAFTA. Ironically, this investor-state provision has been removed from CUSMA, but it has been transplanted into bilateral trade agreements. However, they are not even trade agreements, as in the case of the FIPA with China. There is no trade deal between the People's Republic of China and Canada. Thanks to former prime minister Stephen Harper, there are investment protections for corporations from the People's Republic of China that Canadian corporations cannot access.
Even worse, the FIPA with China keeps any complaints from the People's Republic of China or its state-owned enterprises completely secret. The complaint process is secret. We would only find out about it if it went to the end, to an arbitration. That would be reported.
I do not have enough time in the time I have to speak to Bill C-34 to fully explain why we must have a very different lens when looking at the takeover of Canadian enterprises by any foreign entity. If that foreign entity has the benefit of an investor protection agreement that gives a corporation superior rights to a domestic Canadian corporation, it is very concerning.
I think I had to raise it two or three times in the House before a few other MPs began to say that they were also concerned about Aecon, and in the end, the minister triggered a foreign national security review. It was turned down. The decision was made by the Government of Canada, I think appropriately, to stop the takeover of Aecon by a corporation in the People's Republic of China.
More complicated and recent is the takeover of virtually all of Canada's pulp and paper production by a corporation owned by one man. It is not a limited corporation. It does not appear on the stock exchanges of any country. The name of this corporation is Paper Excellence. It is owned by one human being, one sole person who is a billionaire from Indonesia.
Some of the media coverage, which thank goodness has been intensive, is quite belated. Basically, Paper Excellence had already bought up Domtar, already bought up Catalyst Paper and already bought up Resolute, and after purchasing Northern Pulp of Pictou, Nova Scotia, suddenly Paper Excellence, which has a registered headquarters in Vancouver but is no more Canadian than the Indonesian billionaire who owns it, has bought up virtually all of the pulp and paper processing across Canada.
This is alarming. Is it a national security threat? The question was never asked. No one really saw it coming. It was only seen through the media investigations subsequent to this Indonesian billionaire-owned enterprise called Paper Excellence becoming the owner of all the pulp and paper mills.
The acquisition of Resolute Forest Products had a major impact in Quebec. Many people, including members of the Bloc Québécois, are very concerned since Resolute is an important player in Quebec's pulp and paper industry.
It is also very important in British Columbia, where Catalyst Paper is based. The mill in Crofton and the mill in Powell River were purchased initially from Catalyst Paper and suddenly became owned by a very mysterious Indonesian billionaire. Should this have had a review? Media coverage has managed to unearth that the buying spree of Paper Excellence was likely, although we do not know for sure, financed by loans from the state investment bank of the People's Republic of China.
Do Paper Excellence mills have access to the FIPA with China to complain if we make changes in any way, like provincial changes in Quebec or British Columbia, where these mills are based? They would have access to the FIPA if they can make the case that they are operations of the People's Republic of China. We do not know if this investment is from the People's Republic of China.
Even with the changes made in Bill C-34, I am not reassured that we would have caught what was going on with Paper Excellence. Would we have had an opportunity to have a foreign investment review before this single Indonesian billionaire began buying up all our pulp and paper mills? I wish I had had an opportunity at committee. I wish I had had an opportunity to be in debate at second reading. I know the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay raised some of these issues at the time. He is also concerned about Paper Excellence.
With the time remaining, I will say I think it is unfortunate that we have time allocation now and these issues are rushed. It is unfortunate that we will not adequately debate the amendments that have come forward at report stage, such as the ones I have heard mentioned by the member for South Shore—St. Margarets. I close here and hope we have not missed too much.
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Madam Speaker, of course, I empathize, but I cannot understand.
I do not like our rules' being abused constantly to bring in forced closure on debate to speed things along. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands will know that I think the solution lies in applying all of our rules. It is against our rules in this place, as it is against the rules of the Parliament of Westminster in the U.K., to read a written speech. If we did not have written speeches handed out to members, we would have fewer speeches about every bill, because fewer members of Parliament would be prepared to speak from rough notes without somebody else putting the words in their mouth. That would speed things up. I understand and I empathize, but I plead with the government not to keep doing this, because too many members are going to assume that this is the way it is done.
No matter who is sitting in the Prime Minister's chair, we continue to see democracy eroded in Parliament.
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