At Least Mulcair Is Doing Something Right

[Gary Oak]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/tories-attack-mulcair-ndp-voting-against-protection-war-163245075.html">http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-p ... 45075.html">http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/tories-attack-mulcair-ndp-voting-against-protection-war-163245075.html



      The NDP has always been a disaster where ever and whenever they get in office however it does appear that not everything they do is bad. This deal with China is near disasterous. China is desperate for our resources, we don't have to let them scam us

[EU]

The Left has been saying this for years: Foreign ownership or control of our country is dangerous territory, which is why the Left has a history or Nationalizing industries and or resources to prevent getting sold down the river by companies with little or no regard for the Canadian people.



I guess the Left was right afterall with the way things seem to be going.

[Obvious Li]

read this , study it, memorize it.........



 The Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming



MARGARET WENTE...The Globe and Mail



It's a scary time in Canada these days, and not because of Halloween. A mysterious new investment treaty with China has people spooked. On top of that, the government is about to decide whether CNOOC, a Chinese state-owned oil company, can plant its big red boots in our oil patch. Watch out! We're signing our sovereignty away. Before you can say boo, the rapacious foreigners will turn us into global coolies.



Does all of this seem eerily familiar? Why, yes. Good old-fashioned Canadian nationalism has come back to haunt us. Back in the 1980s, the people who fought the trade deal with the U.S. said the very same things about the Americans. It didn't turn out that way, of course. Free trade made us prosperous and rich.



There's a load of irony in all this. The people who used to be anti-American and pro-Chinese seem to have changed sides. But now that Barack Obama is in office (for the moment, at any rate), anti-Americanism isn't quite as fashionable as it used to be. The Chinese are now the bad guys. And the more they act like capitalists, the more they're demonized for being Communists. "We're not dealing on an even playing field with Communist China," the NDP's Thomas Mulcair warns. "Why in heaven's name would we give up our own resources that way to another country?" The one thing that never goes out of fashion in this country is moral superiority.



The disappointing truth about this investment deal is that it's an incremental step ahead. It won't allow the Chinese to rampage through the land. Canada already has 24 similar agreements with other countries. According to trade lawyer Lawrence Herman, there are 2,500 such agreements in force around the world, and many of them are signed by China.



The real risk to Canada isn't that the Chinese are coming, it's that they'll say to hell with it and take their money somewhere else. And that would be disastrous. We need vast pools of capital to develop our oil and gas fields – hundreds of billions of dollars within the next decade. Where will that money come from? The U.S.? Europe? Fat chance. The people with the money are emerging markets with huge capital surpluses, such as Malaysia and China.



At the same time, we have to diversify our customer base because we're being profoundly screwed by the Americans. So long as they're our only customer for crude oil, they can set the price. The American discount is costing us $18-billion this year alone, according to an estimate by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.



Yet, the Harper government can't figure this thing out. It's acting like its own worst enemy. After announcing to the world that Canada is open for business, it turned down a perfectly respectable takeover offer from the state oil company of Malaysia. In other words: Maybe we're open for business, unless we're not. Meantime, the cabinet is bitterly divided between the pro-China faction and the anti-China faction. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, for example, thinks that, because the Chinese run sweatshops and abuse human rights, we shouldn't let them near our oil patch. But our oil is here, not there. The Chinese have no doubt figured out that, in Canada, they have to play by our rules.



China is rapidly becoming a sophisticated player that operates around the world. We look like local yokels who don't know what we're doing. We need to make up our minds and get on with it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't bargain hard. The proposed CNOOC-Nexen deal offers us a good chance to negotiate better access in China for Canadian firms, and we should use it.



As the government hems and haws, it has ceded the field to the Sinophobes. Yet, fears that the Chinese will take over our oil industry are ridiculous. As Carleton University's Fen Hampson, an expert on global security, points out, the oil sands are so vast that "it is difficult to see how any one firm could dominate production."



It's easy to figure out why NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May want to tell us scary stories about China. It's not really China they want to stop – it's any more development of the oil sands. So far as they're concerned, bitumen is the devil's creation, and they'll fight it with everything they've got. Those of us who think that responsible development of the oil sands is crucial to our prosperity are just puzzled. For Canada, this is the most important game in the world today. And we're playing it like amateurs.

[Gary Oak]

If we ever get under the chinese boot they will lord it over us tyrannically. Worse that you can imagine. Ask anybody with a brain who has spent considerable time over there

[Gary Oak]

It is so obvious that we are getting seriously scammed here and it is impossibnle that the conservative government doesn't know it either. So what the HELL IS REALLY GOING ON HERE !

[Romero]

Harper and the Conservatives know what's going on. They're making it happen. Nobody is forcing them.



They're doing what most conservatives, neoconservatives and neoliberals have been doing for quite a while now. The interests of big business over the interests of the people. Trade deals, selling off resources, foreign ownership...

[EU]

The Left has been saying this for years: Foreign ownership or control of our country is dangerous territory, which is why the Left has a history or Nationalizing industries and or resources to prevent getting sold down the river by companies with little or no regard for the Canadian people.



I guess the Left was right afterall with the way things seem to be going.

Foreign investement is necessary to develop key industries. Only the most backward of Western leftist parties like the NDP still stick to that tired and failed old mantra. I work in the petroleum industry and the most technologically backward, most enviornmentally destructive and most economically mismanaged operating and service companies are state owned ones. This is why the state owned variety all around the world seek aid from their private counterparts.



BTW, government is the biggest polluter.

Can't spell investment or environment? Which College did you say it was? Listen maybe you don't understand the mentality of a huge portion of Canadians...The whole of our country and our resources, are not for sale! Invest yes, outright ownership, it ain't gonna fly even in the eyes of some Conservatives. ie Nexen or Huawei Technologies.



As time goes by and Canadians are more informed there will be a growing number of voters who do not want to sell anything and everything to the highest bidder. Them's the facts (and those seem to escape you continually).

[Securious]

interesting to see you've changed your spots..before, you were all for China. Had second thoughts, or is this a ruse to join the fray?

[Rambo Wong]

ShenLi changing words is so pathetic and I find it funny  too that she has to do this to save face. So pathetic