Well, there we have it, on the record, and in writing, and in Hansard, and in the very regulations of the Investment Canada Act. And it took only a couple of awkward questions from Elizabeth May, the sole Green Party MP in the House of Commons, to draw it out. Which is what she did last night in the House.

Special thanks are also owed to Conservative MP Mike Lake, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry (Edmonton – Mill Woods – Beaumont) for making it clear yesterday, during Adjournment Proceedings, that the September 2009 amendments and regulations to the Investment Canada Act have established the following:

Canada is now a country where Dear Leader gets to decide what “national security” is. Dear Leader gets to decide what the words “national security” mean. He even gets to decide what a “threat” to national security is, and even what the word “threat” means. And Dear Leader is not to be troubled by any legal “definitions” or criteria in making his decisions, which he is empowered to make by the seat of his pants, and for whatever purpose he likes, without even having to explain himself.

I’m not making this up. It’ all there in black and white in the record of yesterday evening’s sitting of Adjournment Proceedings in the House of Commons. Wade through last night’s Hansard and you can read it for yourself. And by the way, Mike Lake isn’t making this up, either.

I’m not certain that even the Chinese Communist Party can get away with this sort of thing anymore. Mind you, I’m not certain whether Mr. Lake was even aware of what was coming out of his own mouth last night because the last time I heard about him was back in 2007 when he submitted a petition to the House of Commons to have the Sasquatch listed under Canada’s Species at Risk Act. But Mr. Lake had all the relevant evidence at hand last night, so fair play to him.

What I am fairly certain about is that in most Canadian provinces, cabinet ministers can’t even appoint marriage commissioners anymore without resort to regulations and criteria and transparency and accountability so as to guard against patronage and corruption and cronyism and favour-trading and so on. I am also fairly certain that most municipal dog catchers in Canada can no longer issue dog licences with the degree of discretionary abandon available to the Minister of Industry now, in Canadian law, in the critical matter of this country’s national security interests.

In any case, what is now unimpeachable in its certainty is that the Minister of Industry now gets to decide whether there’s a threat of any kind involved in any foreign investment or takeover of any economic assets in Canada, even by the acquisitions arms of foreign governments. The Minister gets to decide all these things now, and he doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone, and indeed the law requires him to do just that.

At the moment, that minister is Christian Paradis (Mégantic—L’Érable), and if his statement in the House of Commons last Thursday is anything to go by, Christian Paradis doesn’t even seem to know that these vast powers are in his job description. How doubly reassuring.

Apart from Elizabeth May, there are some Conservative MPs who have noticed these things to their quiet chagrin. They have become reluctantly familiar with the situation in their pursuit of ways to explain how it is that all these grotesque corporate zeppelins commanded by pilots appointed by the Chinese Communist Party’s politburo are suddenly setting down in the Athabasca region of Alberta. There are Conservative cabinet ministers who are aware of what’s happened, too, and in the main they’d prefer you wouldn’t notice. But only in the main.

Internet site reference: http://greenparty.ca/article-link/2012-02-17/national-security-whatever-dear-leader-says