Oral Questions – Foreign Investment

Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, in 2009 the Prime Minister ignored the advice of experts that we needed “national security” defined in the Investment Canada Act and a series of tests to be placed there.

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Today’s press includes the news that PetroChina wants to build the pipeline to bring bitumen crude to tankers. Even the Canadian Council of Chief Executives has the report now by Professor Moran from Georgetown University, saying Canada needs clear tests of national security in the Investment Canada Act. When will we get them?

Hon. Joe Oliver: Mr. Speaker, we do not have any such information. However, we can generate hundreds of thousands of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic activity and at the same time protect the environment. We can do that by modernizing the regulatory system to the requirements of the 21st century so that jobs are created in the next two or three years and not the next fifteen or twenty years.