What do CPC supporters think of the Canada China trade deal?
Zipperfish @ Mon Nov 05, 2012 9:52 am
saturn_656 saturn_656:
jj2424 jj2424:
Oh fer fuck sakes. I didn't know Mulcair had a direct spam line on the internet.
go fuck yourself.
go fuck yourself.
I think the forum noob just told off an MP.
I'm not going to see anything tonight that'll top that, I'm sure.
Yess, "go fuck yourself." Indeed it was an absolutely stunning riposte, sparkling with intelligence and wit. Certainly this is the level of discussion to which we should all aspire.
JaredMilne @ Wed Nov 07, 2012 9:16 pm
What I don't get is why Harper is so obsessed with ramming this trade deal through with no Parliamentary vote and as little scrutiny as possible. You'd think this is something he'd want to make a big fanfare about to promote the Conservatives as good economic managers, what with their signing a trade deal with one of the world's biggest economies. It's the same thing with the Security and Prosperity Partnership a few years ago-there was no Parliamentary or Congressional oversight, just a few national and business leaders negotiating behind closed doors and a lot of security.
If it was really just about harmonizing jellybean requirements, as Harper claimed at the time, then what was the point of all the closed-door negotiations? I mean, when I worked for Alberta's Transportation Ministry, we did stuff like harmonizing the weight limits on transport trucks. Some of Alberta's transportation bureaucrats got together with their counterparts in the other provinces and the federal government and some representatives of the trucking industry, they hashed out some common regulations and the politicians signed off on them. The whole thing is available on the Internet, there was no real secrecy, and it only went ahead with the politicians' approval.
Then again, maybe there's a reason Harper wants to rush this thing through with as little scrutiny as he can, given the rather alarming facts Paul Wells has discovered about the China trade agreement:
$1:
The text suggests there are good reasons why the Prime Minster should not feel reassured about Canadian access to Chinese markets.
Here’s the text of the Canada-China FIPA. These things are common in international relations. They amount to promises to play fairly between two countries, with mechanisms for settling disputes if one country feels slighted. Canada has more than 20 with other countries. China has many of its own (under a more common generic name, Bit or Bilateral Investment Treaty). The heart of a FIPA is a promise to treat the other countries’ investors at least as well as you treat any foreign country’s investors (“Most Favoured Nation Treatment”) or, better still, as well as you treat your own country’s investors (“National Treatment.”) Here’s the relevant section of the Canada-China FIPA, with bold-face emphasis added.
Article 5
Most-Favoured-Nation Treatment
1. Each Contracting Party shall accord to investors of the other Contracting Party treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to investors of a non-Contracting Party with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory….
Article 6
National Treatment
1. Each Contracting Party shall accord to investors of the other Contracting Party treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the expansion, management, conduct, operation and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory.
One of these things is not like the other.
Most of the news coverage about Canada-China investment has centred on Chinese attempts to buy into Canada, especially on the Nexxen deal. But Canadians are also trying to buy into China and they have had a hard time of it. That’s what was making Harper nervous in Vancouver (and former Harper cabinet minister Jim Prentice borderline apoplectic). And the vaunted FIPA provides prospective Canadian investors (of which there are many) very limited protection compared to what it provides existing Canadian investors (of which there aren’t enough).
How on earth did an itinerant Ottawa columnist know to look for this language? In February, while I was waiting for a text, I found this paper (opens a .pdf) by a former UBC prof named Justin Carter. Carter asked the $64 question: “So why has it taken so long to reach an agreement?”
What Carter found was that negotiations had hung up over substantive differences between Canada’s model for FIPAs and China’s standard BIT template. “First, Canada’s FIPAs use a preestablishment model, which grant protections to not only already admitted investment, but also those seeking admission,” he wrote. “These standards apply to both national treatment and most-favoured nation protections. In contrast, China does not include any pre-establishment language in its BITs.”
So on this vital measure, the Canada-China FIPA uses the Chinese instead of the Canadian standard for protection. Contrast with the FIPA Canada negotiated with Jordan in 2009, while Stockwell Day was trade minister. That treaty extends national treatment at the establishment and acquisition stage...
...Here again, the language in the final treaty is very restrictive. “The treaty does not require that arbitration of disputes be done in a manner that is open to the media and the public,” Luke Eric Peterson told me. He’s a reporter in New York City with this investment arbitration newsletter. ”This is a huge concern,” he added — especially because the arbitration process is designed to supplant the previous forum for such disputes, which is the courts. “Journalists that want to cover this beat in future may be deeply chagrined to discover that they are barred from arbitration hearings and may not be able to access the ‘court file’ related to major disputes — unless the states decide that it is in the ‘public interest’ to allow such access.”
So when massive commercial disputes are arbitrated under this FIPA, they will be arbitrated out of public view unless both Canada and China agree. Again, this is a departure from Canadian practice and an embrace of Chinese practice.
Here’s the text of the Canada-China FIPA. These things are common in international relations. They amount to promises to play fairly between two countries, with mechanisms for settling disputes if one country feels slighted. Canada has more than 20 with other countries. China has many of its own (under a more common generic name, Bit or Bilateral Investment Treaty). The heart of a FIPA is a promise to treat the other countries’ investors at least as well as you treat any foreign country’s investors (“Most Favoured Nation Treatment”) or, better still, as well as you treat your own country’s investors (“National Treatment.”) Here’s the relevant section of the Canada-China FIPA, with bold-face emphasis added.
Article 5
Most-Favoured-Nation Treatment
1. Each Contracting Party shall accord to investors of the other Contracting Party treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to investors of a non-Contracting Party with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory….
Article 6
National Treatment
1. Each Contracting Party shall accord to investors of the other Contracting Party treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the expansion, management, conduct, operation and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory.
One of these things is not like the other.
Most of the news coverage about Canada-China investment has centred on Chinese attempts to buy into Canada, especially on the Nexxen deal. But Canadians are also trying to buy into China and they have had a hard time of it. That’s what was making Harper nervous in Vancouver (and former Harper cabinet minister Jim Prentice borderline apoplectic). And the vaunted FIPA provides prospective Canadian investors (of which there are many) very limited protection compared to what it provides existing Canadian investors (of which there aren’t enough).
How on earth did an itinerant Ottawa columnist know to look for this language? In February, while I was waiting for a text, I found this paper (opens a .pdf) by a former UBC prof named Justin Carter. Carter asked the $64 question: “So why has it taken so long to reach an agreement?”
What Carter found was that negotiations had hung up over substantive differences between Canada’s model for FIPAs and China’s standard BIT template. “First, Canada’s FIPAs use a preestablishment model, which grant protections to not only already admitted investment, but also those seeking admission,” he wrote. “These standards apply to both national treatment and most-favoured nation protections. In contrast, China does not include any pre-establishment language in its BITs.”
So on this vital measure, the Canada-China FIPA uses the Chinese instead of the Canadian standard for protection. Contrast with the FIPA Canada negotiated with Jordan in 2009, while Stockwell Day was trade minister. That treaty extends national treatment at the establishment and acquisition stage...
...Here again, the language in the final treaty is very restrictive. “The treaty does not require that arbitration of disputes be done in a manner that is open to the media and the public,” Luke Eric Peterson told me. He’s a reporter in New York City with this investment arbitration newsletter. ”This is a huge concern,” he added — especially because the arbitration process is designed to supplant the previous forum for such disputes, which is the courts. “Journalists that want to cover this beat in future may be deeply chagrined to discover that they are barred from arbitration hearings and may not be able to access the ‘court file’ related to major disputes — unless the states decide that it is in the ‘public interest’ to allow such access.”
So when massive commercial disputes are arbitrated under this FIPA, they will be arbitrated out of public view unless both Canada and China agree. Again, this is a departure from Canadian practice and an embrace of Chinese practice.
I have the same problem with this agreement that I do with NAFTA-who the hell appoints these trade tribunals? What kind of accountability do they have? Where do they get off telling our elected officials what they can and can't do? That's our right and responsibility, as citizens.
People have been complaining about judicial activism in Canada for years, so the feds have been developing ways to have potential appointees to Canadian courts be scrutinized by MPs before they're appointed. And judges have solid constitutional grounds for doing what they do, far more so than these unelected, unaccountable, largely anonymous trade bureaucrats. It's our right to hold them to account if the politicians make laws that are detrimental to our economy-for all the complaints about civil service bureaucrats thinking they knowing better than your average person, we seem to be putting an awful lot of faith in these trade bureaucrats. Are we supposed to assume that they can do a better job of deciding what the politicians can or can't do than us, their actual bosses?
Besides, it's not like NAFTA protected us from being hosed in the past-anyone remember the softwood lumber dispute, wherein the U.S. brazenly ignored NAFTA rulings? Or how about the BSE crisis of the early 2000s, when NAFTA proved worthless in getting the border reopened to our beef even after we fixed the problem? Those pricks in R-CALF fought to keep the border closed, since apparently they couldn't handle a little market competition.
jj2424 @ Wed Nov 28, 2012 10:14 am
Well well well so what do we think now that Trudeau likes it?
crickets will be chirping.
jj2424 @ Fri Dec 07, 2012 4:17 pm
jj2424 jj2424:
Well well well so what do we think now that Trudeau likes it?
crickets will be chirping.
crickets will be chirping.
Gunnair @ Fri Dec 07, 2012 4:20 pm
Answering your own posts.
Lonely.
jj2424 @ Fri Dec 07, 2012 4:23 pm
Gunnair Gunnair:
Answering your own posts.
Lonely.
Lonely.
You're the one who posts on here all day long. Did all your sheep run away?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2 ... eover.html
Gunnair @ Fri Dec 07, 2012 4:32 pm
jj2424 jj2424:
Gunnair Gunnair:
Answering your own posts.
Lonely.
Lonely.
You're the one who posts on here all day long. Did all your sheep run away?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2 ... eover.html
Nope. But your answering your own posts because no one will talk with you.
Maybe yours is more desperation than lonely, Trit.
kilroy @ Fri Dec 07, 2012 5:25 pm
From the CBC link
"When we say Canada is open for business, we do not mean that Canada is for sale to foreign governments," Harper said.'
or: When we say that Canada is open for business we do mean that Canada is for sale to corporate interests no matter what their political persuasion. What the hell, we have no pride, and money coming in is an exceptionally good circumstance.
Curtman @ Tue Dec 11, 2012 5:03 pm
Prime Minister Stephen Harper vows Chinese takeover of oil firm Nexen ‘the end of a trend’
$1:
A Chinese state-owned oil giant is being allowed to expand its holdings in Canada’s oilpatch with a $15.1-billion buyout, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper says it won’t happen again.
In a long-awaited decision, the federal government announced CNOOC Ltd., controlled by Beijing, can take over Calgary-based Nexen Inc. in the largest acquisition yet of Canadian oil and gas riches by a Chinese company.
While green-lighting the sale, Harper said the mounting wave of takeovers of Canada’s oilsands by foreign state-owned firms has gone far enough and will not be allowed to continue except in “exceptional” circumstances.
“To be blunt, Canadians have not spent years reducing the ownership of sectors of the economy by our own governments, only to see them bought and controlled by foreign governments instead,” Harper told the media after the announcement Friday.
“The government’s concern and discomfort for some time has been that very quickly, a series of large-scale controlling transactions by foreign state-owned companies could rapidly transform this (oilsands) industry from one that is essentially a free market to one that is effectively under control of a foreign government.”
...
In a long-awaited decision, the federal government announced CNOOC Ltd., controlled by Beijing, can take over Calgary-based Nexen Inc. in the largest acquisition yet of Canadian oil and gas riches by a Chinese company.
While green-lighting the sale, Harper said the mounting wave of takeovers of Canada’s oilsands by foreign state-owned firms has gone far enough and will not be allowed to continue except in “exceptional” circumstances.
“To be blunt, Canadians have not spent years reducing the ownership of sectors of the economy by our own governments, only to see them bought and controlled by foreign governments instead,” Harper told the media after the announcement Friday.
“The government’s concern and discomfort for some time has been that very quickly, a series of large-scale controlling transactions by foreign state-owned companies could rapidly transform this (oilsands) industry from one that is essentially a free market to one that is effectively under control of a foreign government.”
...
Hooray! Here it is! Something I agree with Stephen Harper about.
Justin Trudeau: Why the CNOOC-Nexen deal is good for Canada
$1:
Because we have failed to make the case for trade, Canadians are understandably anxious. Because we failed to ensure that the middle class participates in the growth created by trade, support for it has recently broken down.
The twin issues of the Asian investment in the oilsands and the Northern Gateway Pipeline must be seen in this light. In the absence of a clear, public strategy, with long-term goals and positive outcomes fully aired, debated and understood, Canadians see these issues as one-offs. The government has failed to provide the context, to make the positive case for Asia. It is therefore as difficult to reject bad ideas like the Northern Gateway as it is to approve good opportunities like the CNOOC and Petronas deals.
Why is the CNOOC-Nexen deal good for Canada? Because Chinese and other foreign investors will create middle-class Canadian jobs. Foreign investment raises productivity, and hence the living standards of Canadian families. More fundamentally, it is in Canada’s interest to broaden and deepen our relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.
...
The twin issues of the Asian investment in the oilsands and the Northern Gateway Pipeline must be seen in this light. In the absence of a clear, public strategy, with long-term goals and positive outcomes fully aired, debated and understood, Canadians see these issues as one-offs. The government has failed to provide the context, to make the positive case for Asia. It is therefore as difficult to reject bad ideas like the Northern Gateway as it is to approve good opportunities like the CNOOC and Petronas deals.
Why is the CNOOC-Nexen deal good for Canada? Because Chinese and other foreign investors will create middle-class Canadian jobs. Foreign investment raises productivity, and hence the living standards of Canadian families. More fundamentally, it is in Canada’s interest to broaden and deepen our relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.
...
Bob Rae eager to be regular MP again, but not sure he'll run again
$1:
He pointed to the NDP's opposition to the Chinese state-owned CNOOC's takeover of Nexen ("they're now the party that's completely opposed to state owned enterprises, which is a novel position for a social-democratic party to take") and its opposition to a foreign investment agreement with China, which he termed "anti-Chinese."
They said it couldn't be done.
kilroy @ Tue Dec 11, 2012 9:46 pm
Yes, most typical thing I've ever heard a Lib/Con say. Rae is just looking for a senate seat at this point.
PublicAnimalNo9 @ Wed Dec 12, 2012 1:56 am
$1:
He pointed to the NDP's opposition to the Chinese state-owned CNOOC's takeover of Nexen ("they're now the party that's completely opposed to state owned enterprises, which is a novel position for a social-democratic party to take") and its opposition to a foreign investment agreement with China, which he termed "anti-Chinese."
Bob the Knob is a moron. If he can't tell the difference between a domestic state-owned enterprise operating domestically and a foreign state-owned enterprise gobbling up Canadian PRIVATE enterprise, well then it's no wonder running Ontario was so far beyond him.
Crown corporations, by law, are also limited. They cannot make a profit at the expense of private enterprise. I'm betting CNOOC won't be stuck under that rule.
And let's not also forget the takeover by yet another foreign state-owned national, Petronas.
Curtman @ Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:50 am
Yeah, but you almost have to respect that more than the guy who speaks about being against something that he just approved.
PublicAnimalNo9 @ Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:45 pm
Curtman Curtman:
Yeah, but you almost have to respect that more than the guy who speaks about being against something that he just approved.
There is NOTHING about Bob Rae I respect. He is an egotistical, snide little jerk, and a political opportunist.
Curtman @ Wed Dec 12, 2012 11:28 pm
He'll be gone soon. Whether the new guy is any better remains to be seen.