Attention should be paid to the fact that the Prime Minister has signed a deal with President Hu of China that promises investor protection. The text of said deal is not yet before the House of Commons, but everything I read about it (including from business analysts at Heenan Blaikie and Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt) anticipates the deal will include investor-state provisions similar to those in Chapter 11 of NAFTA.

Chapter 11 of NAFTA allows corporations from Mexico or the USA to claim damages against Canada if any level of Canadian government (municipal, provincial or federal) causes them to experience less profits than they had anticipated. Canada has actually repealed a law limiting a toxic gasoline additive when the US-based manufacturer sued under Chapter 11 — and we paid $10 million plus in damages. This outrage only gets more outrageous if the claims for multiple millions in damages come from a non-democratic enormous economy to which we have hitched our wagon as a compliant resource colony.

When will Mr. Harper share the text of this investor agreement with Parliamentarians? When will it be shared with Canadians? It was signed on September 8th when both Harper and Hu were in Russia. It must now be ratified. Assuming all the Conservative MPs who are worried about selling out our country to China do what they always do and submit to the will of the Boss, it will become a trade obligation. China will, if offended by any new health, labour, or environmental law, be able to make a claim for damages. I have already witnessed the chilling effect of Canada knowing a US based corporation can sue under Chapter 11. It was rumoured that former Liberal Health Minister Allan Rock refused to ban cosmetic use of pesticides for fear of Chapter 11 claims by US pesticide manufacturers.

What happens when Canadian laws, passed democratically, are struck down in hotel room arbitrations launched by the Communist Party of China?

I pay attention to things that CNOOC’s CEO says in public. In the August 29, 2012, Wall Street Journal, CNOOC CEO Wang Yilin said, “Large-scale deep-water rigs are our mobile national territory and a strategic weapon.” OK, so the bitumen isn’t mobile – until you mix it with diluents and stick it in a pipeline. But the oil sands do become Chinese territory. What did he mean about “strategic weapon?”

Are there national security implications?

I would love to trust in a national security review under the 2009 amendments to the Investment Canada Act, except that Stephen Harper specifically rejected the advice of the blue ribbon panel (struck after the Minmetal attempt to buy Noranda) that Canada needed a clear, objective definition of “national security.” The experts thought we should have a definition and use it to assess any takeovers of Canadian companies by foreign interests — particularly state-owned enterprises. Our PM rejected the advice. Instead the Canada Gazette for the 2009 amendments says that “national security” cannot be defined. It is, apparently, a fluid term.

Smart people I respect, like Andrew Coyne, say “don’t worry — there’s no national security threat when you cannot take the resource out of the country.” But then I run into stories like this:

Beijing hints at bond attack on Japan

Jin Baisong from the Chinese Academy of International Trade – a branch of the commerce ministry – said China should use its power as Japan’s biggest creditor with $230bn (£141bn) of bonds to “impose sanctions on Japan in the most effective manner” and bring Tokyo’s festering fiscal crisis to a head.

Writing in the Communist Party newspaper China Daily, Mr. Jin called on China to invoke the “security exception” rule under the World Trade Organisation to punish Japan, rejecting arguments that a trade war between the two Pacific giants would be mutually destructive.

Separately, the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported that China is drawing up plans to cut off Japan’s supplies of rare earth metals needed for hi-tech industry.

– The Telegraph, September 19, 2012

OK, maybe he’s just threatening to destroy Japan’s economy. Maybe he doesn’t mean it. Maybe the WTO wouldn’t let him do it…. but then there was the Sino-Forest fraud, busted by the Ontario Securities Commission:

OSC puts the spotlight on Sino-Forest gatekeepers

In its allegations Tuesday, the OSC noted that auditors Ernst & Young “were not made aware” of Sino-Forest’s “systemic practice of creating deceitful purchase contracts and sales contracts.” The commission makes no further comment on the audit firm’s work. A spokeswoman for Ernst & Young could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The OSC issued a report in March calling on boards, underwriters, auditors and stock exchanges to improve the practices for listing foreign companies on Canadian stock exchanges, saying there has been a broad lack of “skepticism” about business practices in emerging companies like China.

– Globe and Mail, May 22, 2012

There’s a beautiful term: “broad lack of skepticism.”

It makes me nervous that Chinese companies are merely branches of the Chinese government. The Communist Party hierarchy appoints the boards of directors of CNOOC, Sinopec and Petro-China.

When I read in the business pages that Petro-China wants to bid on construction of the Enbridge pipeline, and read in the same story that Chinese companies are very competitive in their bids because of low labour costs, I picture the labourers who built the national dream of Pierre Berton’s imaginings… with a brutal and nasty history. We have a temporary foreign workers programme. It could happen. And the bitumen going through the proposed pipeline is to go to Chinese supertankers to Chinese refineries.

All this makes me nervous. It makes me nervous in two quite contradictory ways. Firstly, I am a tolerant small “l” liberal type of person. I am not Sino-phobic. China is not a country one can ignore. In terms of global climate negotiations, China’s engagement is essential. China has been, at least at COP17, far more progressive than Canada in talking about the need for a global climate deal.

I want greater ties with China for environmental endeavors, and cultural exchanges, and — yes – trade too. Losing sovereignty to China makes me nervous. I don’t want to be intolerant. But I want us to trade items made in Canada, by Canadians, to China. I don’t like the idea of China owning Canada. It makes it hard for us to point out to the Chinese government that it must start respecting human rights. We need to be really forceful in advocating for religious and political freedom in China. How do we do that when they have veto power over Canadian laws?

And then there are issues of global tensions. Mr. Harper and John Baird are talking tough to Iran. But what about the fact that, while we claim we are exerting sanctions on anyone doing business with Iran, Sinopec, now a major stake-holder in Syncrude, is Iran’s number one customer for oil? Or, that Chinese oil money helps prop up Bashar al-Assad?

So, bottom-line, the Nexen-CNOOC deal doesn’t have me nearly as freaked out as the investor deal Stephen Harper signed in Russia. But when I think about the idea of “net benefit” I just don’t see any answer but “no.”

The post Why I think we are absolute idiots if we approve CNOOC take-over of Nexen appeared first on Elizabeth May.

“This has been described as the largest takeover by a Chinese company in the world, so very serious questions must be raised about the wisdom of such an unprecedented move,” May stated.  “We simply cannot allow strategic energy resources to disappear from Canadian control at such a rate and level with no real oversight.”

State-owned CNOOC was the first Chinese company to make a major acquisition in the Canadian oil industry when it purchased a 17-per-cent interest in MEG Energy for $150-million in 2005.  Then, in 2011, it expanded by acquiring OPTI Canada for $2.1-billion, giving it 35 percent of key assets like the Long Lake oil sands facility.  Nexen controls and operates the remaining 65 per cent of that site.

Foreign control of Alberta’s oil sands has reached a level that could very well be worrying.  This year, PetroChina bought out Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.’s remaining 40-percent stake in the MacKay River – and became the first Chinese company to have full ownership of an oil-sands project.  Last year, deals included Sinopec’s $2.2 billion purchase of Daylight Energy Ltd., its purchase of 9 percent of Syncrude, and CNOOC’s takeover of Opti Canada.

The Nexen mega-deal was announced almost at the same time as a $1.5-billion acquisition by China’s top refiner, Sinopec Corp., of a 49-per-cent stake in the North Sea operations of Talisman – one of Canada’s top oil and gas exploration companies.

“Chinese investment in Canada’s oil sands is not so much about opening new markets in China for Canadian products as it is about nationalizing our valuable resources by Beijing,” said May.  “With investor-state rules, giving corporations even greater power, now under negotiation between the two countries, we may be precluded from implementing more rigorous regulations.

“The prime minister’s eagerness to encourage Chinese investments has already led to gutting of environmental laws in Bill C-38.”

Not all countries are as willing as Canada to hand over their strategic energy interests.  In the US, a negative reaction forced CNOOC to withdraw an $18-billion (U.S.) bid for California-based Unocal Corp.

“The Harper Conservatives added the words ‘national security’ to the Investment Canada Act in 2009, but so far they have refused to define it and have rejected expert advice on the matter,” said May.  “They haven’t even clarified what they consider to be of “net benefit” to Canada when it comes to selling our non-renewable assets.

“We are losing control over energy ownership and planning as we court multi-billion dollar investments from enterprises intrinsically part of a foreign Communist government with an appalling human rights record.”

Anthony Campbell, former head of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat of the Privy Council Office, wrote:  ‘The servility of Canada’s political leaders…to the obvious manipulations of Chinese strategists who flaunt world trade and financial market principles and jail democracy-promoting authors for 10-year terms is a national disgrace.”

Noting also that a Harris-Decima survey showed that 90 percent of Canadians oppose Chinese companies gaining a controlling interest in or completely taking over a Canadian-owned company, May called for a public inquiry into the Nexen purchase and the status and future of foreign interests in the oil sands.

“I know I’m not alone as I voice my concerns,” May concluded.  “This reckless sell-out cannot continue.”

The post May Demands Public Inquiry into Future of Strategic Resource – Latest Chinese Acquisition in Oil Sands Raises Serious Concerns appeared first on Elizabeth May.

If they have money, we have a different approach. It is a carefully executed piece of hypocrisy that requires a sanctimonious tone. The listener is somehow to suspend disbelief in the face of a counter-intuitive advanced wisdom, which is this: ‘If we are really concerned about human rights, the best way to secure improvements is through trade and forging relationships with countries that abuse human rights.’ Over and over again, Canadian governments have advocated that trading with China will cause China to absorb, as if through some mercantile osmosis, Canadian values.

No set of diplomatic criteria drove Stephen Harper to refuse to meet with Cuba in the room, while courting Communist China. If Cuba had all the money, our prime minister would be smoking cigars in Havana every chance he got.

It was not always so. Former Prime Minister Mulroney led the charge to enforce sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Against the indomitable Iron Lady herself, Mulroney succeeded in getting South Africa ejected from the Commonwealth.

It was former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien who first argued we had to trade to improve human rights as he inked a nuclear deal with the butcher of Beijing, so-called for his role in the Tiananmen Square massacre. On November 26, 1996, Chrétien made a quick visit to Shanghai and clowned around with former Chinese Premier Li Peng. Coverage of the visit noted that replying to Amnesty International’s criticism, ‘the prime minister responds that quiet diplomacy and stronger trade ties are the best way to promote political liberalization.’ (Jim Brown, ‘China deal warms China ties, sparks hot attack,’ November 27, 1996, Canadian Press.)

That nuclear deal is highly significant in light of Bill C-38. The 1996 CANDU deal marked the first time that in order to accommodate China, Canada violated its own environmental assessment laws, and, retroactively, weakened them.

In order to get China to buy two CANDU reactors, Canada lent China $1.5 billion. This was, at the time, the largest external loan in the history of Canada. The use of federal money triggered an environmental assessment under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (as it was before C-38.) On discovering they had accidentally triggered a mandatory environmental review, the Cabinet met in a hasty late night session and passed a regulation to change the review of projects outside Canada. In January 1997, the Sierra Club of Canada, of which I was Executive Director at the time, launched a court challenge against evading environmental assessment law to accommodate the Chinese government.

Here we are, fifteen years later, and China still does not like our environmental assessment laws. According to a 2010 report, Canada’s environmental assessment laws are a barrier to greater Chinese investment (Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canada-China: Building a Strong Economic Partnership, July 2010.) In the 2010 Conservative budget implementation bill environmental reviews were weakened to accommodate China.

In the House, explaining why Bill C-38 must be passed, the Prime Minister said it was in order ‘to provide certainty to investors.’ (May 10, 2012). What investors would those be?

In the last few years direct ownership of Alberta oil sands by Chinese state-owned oil companies has gone from nearly nothing to over $12 billion. Chinese money is already invested in the Enbridge pipeline and tanker scheme, Petro-China wants to build the pipeline, and Suncor is talking about using lowerwaged Chinese temporary workers–just in time to drive down wages and environmental standards. Sinopec is the fifth largest corporation in the world with a board of directors appointed by the Chinese Communist polit-bureau. And now Sinopec’s 9% share in Syncrude has given it veto power over any future decision to refine Syncrude bitumen in Canada, rather than put it in tankers.

‘The servility of Canada’s political leaders…to the obvious manipulations of Chinese strategists who flaunt world trade and financial market principles and jail democracy–promoting authors for 10-year terms is a national disgrace.’ That quote was cited by Victoria writer Terry Glavin, who added, ‘It wasn’t some dweebish umbrage-taker from the Kitsilano Civil Liberties Union who wrote those words. It was Tony Campbell, the former head of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat for the Privy Council Office.’ (‘China has our forests, now we’re sending our oilfields too,’ National Post, January 17, 2012).

So, back to that wonderful transmission of values through trade. Does anyone else notice that it seems to be working? Canada is absorbing Chinese values respecting human rights, labour laws, and environmental protections. It is indeed a national disgrace.

The post Values that rub off appeared first on Elizabeth May.

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When we talk about nuclear issues, we know that we have just approved the sale of yellowcake from Saskatchewan to China under terms that the U.S. finds too shaky to meet the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We cannot track yellowcake adequately under these new rules. We, therefore, could be not only dealing with companies that buy the Iranian oil and prop up that regime, as China props up Syria, but we could also be in a situation where Canadian yellowcake makes its way into the Chinese nuclear program or even into the Iranian nuclear program. We cannot track these sales.

We have let the horse out of the barn without paying attention. In 2009, when we amended the Investment Canada Act, we should have put a clause in, as the experts recommended, for national security checks to be included. We have no protection. We are not paying attention.

Deepak Obhrai: Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, I want to make it very clear for the hon. member that we are concerned with what is happening in Iran, as she herself is concerned with the situation. However, our approach is to work with our allies. Of course we are aware that China is one of the larger customers of Iran going back before these sanctions were put forward and therefore diplomatically the pressure is being put on China from everyone to reduce the imports of oil into China.

The member keeps talking about China. It is India as well that is reducing its imports from China. However, this is working together diplomatically with all our allies to ensure that pressure is put forward on China and on other countries that are buying the Iranian oil to get them to come to the table and talk about the nuclear activities.

Right now as we talk the second stage of that conference will be taking place pretty soon in which all five countries, including China, will be talking with the Iranians in reference to their nuclear activities.

The post Adjournment Proceedings – Foreign Affairs appeared first on Elizabeth May.

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The issue deals with the question of the integrity of Canada’s ability to enforce sanctions against Iran when we are increasingly dealing with what we consider new markets or new trading partners, however we want to put it, but essentially allowing state-owned Communist Party enterprises owned by the Government of China to become increasingly large investors in Canada.

Some of the very same companies, not just the general concept of state-owned Chinese enterprises, are major investors in Iran. In fact, the single largest customer for Iranian oil is Sinopec. Sinopec, as people may know, has been investing heavily in the oil sands. In fact, it purchased a 9% share that used to be ConocoPhillips’ share of the oil sands, and at the same time, the ConocoPhillips’ share was a share of Syncrude, so it is a major investor now in Syncrude, but it is not the only company that deals with Iran as well as investing in Canada.

I would mention, for instance, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, sometimes called CNOOC, has completely purchased, or one of its subsidiaries has purchased, the Long Lake oil sands mine in Alberta. At the same time, it is doing a $16 billion investment with Tehran in the North Pars gas fields. That is not the only company. If we look at PetroChina, it has a 25 year deal with the National Iranian Gas Export Company, and at the same time it was only six years into its 25 year deal with the Iranian National Gas Company when that same company, PetroChina, purchased all of the mine at MacKay River oil sands project.

What does this mean for us in terms of our sanctions? On March 5 I said that in light of the increased tensions around Iran and around nuclear issues, the importance of sanctions could not be overestimated. I asked the minister, in this light, whether we were concerned that our new trading partner, Sinopec in China, which is the largest buyer of Iranian oil, was undermining the sanctions.

The minister’s response, while interesting, did not relate to my question. I hope this evening, as we pursue this matter, we can perhaps get an answer to the question.

I would like to put into the discussion we are having this evening that I am not the only member of Parliament who is concerned about Chinese investments in Canada at the same time that these same Chinese companies are the major oil customers for Iran, undermining sanctions. This is a quote from the hon. member for Mount Royal that reproduced in the Ottawa Citizen:

To the extent that we’ve now got sanctions-violating companies here in Canada that are doing business in Iran, the implications are serious…. They are very, very serious. 

Again, that was the hon. member for Mount Royal, who has a very strong record in the area of working as hard as we all can to ensure that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad understands that Canada is not his friend. We are friends of the people of Iran but we are not his friends.

How then did they perceive what is going on in global diplomacy when we are opening our arms? We are actually undermining environmental laws, and Bill C-38 was its destruction of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It appears to be in the interest of speeding things that Sinopec wants. How do we justify that?

Deepak Obhrai: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for bringing this concern to Parliament today, as has the member for Mount Royal.

Canada is deeply concerned by the Iranian government’s continued disrespect for the human rights of its citizens, its destabilizing regional role and its nuclear proliferation activities.

I will say quite clearly that Iran clearly knows that Canada is no friend of Iran. We have the largest, strongest sanctions against Iran, going beyond what the Security Council has said.

Most recently, on January 13, we expanded existing sanctions by adding five entities and individuals to our list of designated persons. Prior to that, on November 21, 2001, Canada implemented a number of strong measures against Iran under the Special Economic Measures Act. These expanded sanctions prohibit all financial transactions with Iran or any person in Iran, adding individuals and entities to the list of designated persons and expanding the list of goods prohibited for export.

The member has raised the question of China. As a result of the sanctions that we have put on Iran, there is no direct energy sector relations between Canada and Iran.

Furthermore, all Canadian sanctions against Iran were drafted as broadly as allowed under Canadian law. There is no power in Canadian law to apply sanctions to non-Canadians outside Canada. However, the prohibitions apply to persons in Canada and Canadians abroad, and they apply to financial transactions carried out for the benefit of and on the direction of or order of any person in Iran. 

Canada’s concern about the nuclear, and not only nuclear activities but also human rights violations has been long-standing. As part of our ongoing efforts to promote respect for human rights in that country, Canada led the adoption of the resolution on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran in the fall of 2011 session of the United Nations General Assembly. This marked the ninth consecutive year Canada led this initiative. The resolution was co-sponsored by 42 member states and supported by 89 in the vote, with only 13 members voting against it. This represented the largest margin of adoption since Canada assumed the lead on this resolution in 2003.

I do join with the member on the opposite side in expressing the concern that she has expressed about the nuclear proliferation by Iran and the threat that Iran poses to the region. We will be working with our international allies, and that includes China as well, to ensure that sanctions are applied and that as much diplomatic pressure is put on Iran as we can.

The post Adjournment Proceedings – Foreign Affairs appeared first on Elizabeth May.

In this light, are we not concerned that our new trading partner, Sinopec in China, which is the largest buyer of Iranian oil, is undermining the sanctions?

Hon. John Baird: Mr. Speaker, we are tremendously concerned about three things going on in Iran. Obviously the enrichment and the IEA report of its nuclear activities cause all of us substantial concern.

We are concerned about the deteriorating human rights record of the Iranian regime, and that is why Canada has led efforts at the United Nations to bring light to this huge problem. We are also concerned by the intervention that Iran takes in neighbouring countries supporting international terrorism.

We will work to take every diplomatic effort necessary, in concert with our allies and others, to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons.

The post Oral Questions – Foreign Affairs appeared first on Elizabeth May.

On the face of it, it is a neatly packaged controversy.

You could say it’s about the government’s weirdly over-the-top enthusiasm for the $6-billion Enbridge Inc. proposal to push a pipeline from Alberta’s oilsands through northern British Columbia to saltwater at Kitimat. Or you could say it’s about an environmentalist plot to keep Alberta’s oilsands landlocked, although even the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is laughing out loud at that one.

In any case, we all agree that it’s about satiating China’s growing demand for energy and getting out from under Canada’s reliance on the limited American market for Albertan oil. But something else has been going on, and it’s not funny anymore.

Nearly half of the $100-million upfront cash for the Enbridge project is coming either directly or indirectly from the seventh-largest corporation on Earth, the absurdly corrupt Sinopec, a ravenous behemoth run directly by the regime in Beijing. Oilpatch rumours have it that Beijing’s own Sinochem and the China National Petroleum Corp. came up with at least some of the other half. In any case, you aren’t allowed to know. Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn’t saying, and neither is Enbridge.

Under its aggressive and ambitious president, Wang Tianpu, Sinopec has been in hyperdrive acquiring direct stakes in foreign energy properties. It was Sinopec that spent $2 billion on an outright purchase of the Alberta oil and gas firm Daylight Energy late last year. A direct Beijing foothold — this was a first for Canada’s oilfields.

But it was an earlier $2-billion Sinopec takeover of Vancouver’s Tanganyika Oil that won Beijing its first big piece of Syria’s Oudeh oilfields, and that’s how Sinopec provides the sanctions-busting revenues that allow the delusional mass murderer Bashar al-Assad to hang on in Damascus. It’s the same game Sinopec has been playing in Sudan, keeping the genocidaire Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum instead of in the prisoner’s dock at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Here’s where it gets really ugly.

China is now Iran’s number one trading partner. Sinopec is now Iran’s main buyer of crude oil. Tehran has managed to avoid the bite of Euro-American sanctions aimed at curbing the ayatollahs’ nuclear ambitions. Sinopec is the reason why the sanctions are failing. If sanctions fail, it will almost certainly mean war.

Just how Sinopec became co-author of Stephen Harper’s new foreign policy and energy strategy isn’t a question we’re supposed to be asking. And it’s not impudent Kitsilano hippies with American funding and precious feelings about oil spills and sea otters who have been asking questions like that one, or wondering out loud about what sort of role Vancouver’s powerful enclave of Chinese business tycoons has been playing in it all.

Here are just a few people who have told me in recent days that whatever is going on here, there is something very strange and wrong about the whole thing.

Martin Collacott is a senior fellow with the arch-conservative Fraser Institute. He was a career public servant with Foreign Affairs, and the department’s former director-general for security. Stephen Kaufmann is a former Canadian trade commissioner in Hong Kong, the president of his own forest-products company. Scott Newark, former executive director of the Canadian Police Association, was senior policy adviser to Stockwell Day, the former minister responsible for the Asia Pacific Gateway (Day is now a “distinguished fellow” with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada). The list goes on and on.

So do the questions. There’s another one coming up.

In the summer of 2010, Richard Fadden, the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, let it be known that politicians in at least two provinces were under “foreign influence” and China was funding political activism in Canada. For his trouble, Fadden was thrown under the bus by the Commons Public Safety Committee. New Democrat Don Davies likened Fadden to the infamous, communist-obsessed American senator Joseph McCarthy, and claimed that Fadden had “tarred” the entire Chinese-Canadian community.

Fadden followed up with a detailed memorandum to his boss, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. A heavily redacted version came to light a few months later. Among other things, Fadden told Toews: “Canada is a target for foreign interference due to our natural resources, scientific and technological sectors, our role and influence in the international community, and our close relations with powerful allies.”

Fadden wasn’t talking about the influence of American eco-millionaires. He was talking about China. Fadden named names. Vic Toews knows the names of the politicians Fadden was talking about. Here’s the question: Who are they, exactly?

I’ll leave the last word to David Kilgour, a former MP with both the Conservatives and Liberals, a former deputy speaker of the House, and an unflinching friend of the Chinese people: “We have to start asking these questions. What’s happening here is madness. It’s madness.”

Terry Glavin is a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen. His most recent book is Come From the Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle For Peace in Afghanistan.

Article reproduced with permission.

The post Questions Canadians should be asking about China appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I want to make it clear that I certainly support the idea that we have better ties with China. This is not a statement about our relationship with China and the importance of raising human rights in Tibet and the situation for dissidents in Chinese jails. Our opportunities for raising these issues are enhanced with having a respectful, strong relationship. This is about how Canadians should respond to ensure that foreign investment reviews are clear, that the information is transparent and available and that there are national security reviews that go along with this, particularly where strategic Canadian resources, such as oil sands and uranium, are being traded with the People’s Republic of China’s enterprises.

I would like to put this into context. The hon. Minister of Natural Resources has said there is not very much investment from China directly in the oil sands. Of the $73.6 billion invested in the oil sands between 2007 and 2011, oil sands investment from China was approximately $12 billion, or 16%. This is not a small percentage.

The involvement of Chinese companies, particularly PetroChina, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and largely Sinopec have been strategic. In the case of Sinopec it has managed to buy a 9% share in Syncrude for a cost of just about $5 billion. It managed to have a seat on the board of Syncrude and be in a position to veto any decision that Syncrude might otherwise make to process the bitumen crude in Canada, thus creating Canadian jobs in Canadian refineries. That strategic advantage for Sinopec does not seem to have been studied in the way that I think Canadians would have expected.

When I asked this question in relation to the oil sands last week, the Minister of Industry claimed that back in 2009 “we improved the transparency”. This was in relation to my question about the national security aspects of this kind of investment. In fact, when we go back to the decisions in 2009, we find that the cabinet rejected the advice of the expert panel that had been put together in 2007. It was a competition policy review panel that had been mandated to review these arrangements.

According to the Canada Gazette of September 30, 2009:

The term national security should be explicitly defined and national security reviews should take place according to concrete, objective, and transparent criteria. This recommendation was not accepted…

In addition to the oil sands investment, we now have the Prime Minister coming back with a deal for uranium. This deal for uranium has much more lax accounting procedures than was offered in previous deals with China, which is why in the past Canada has not continued to trade uranium in China. The strategic concern is not just for what China would do with the uranium, but for China’s relationship with the civilian nuclear industry program in Pakistan and the potential for nuclear proliferation. These are strategic concerns.

I would like the government to tell Canadians exactly what national security review—

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry.

Mike Lake: Madam Speaker, I took note of the member’s questions, both last week and again this week. Both questions are important in light of tonight’s debates.

Last week, she asked the minister about foreign security provisions in the Investment Canada Act. The minister responded that the national security aspect was included in the law in 2009. Unsatisfied with the answer, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands stood up in the House yesterday and asked the following. She said:

Mr. Speaker, last week I put a question to the Minister of Industry relating to the Chinese takeover of Canadian resources.

He said I was unfamiliar with the Investment Canada Act changes of 2009. 

She went on to say:

In fact, the Canada Gazette of September 30, 2009 said:

Then the member quoted from the Canada Gazette, just as she did now:

The term national security should be explicitly defined and national security reviews should take place according to concrete, objective, and transparent criteria. This recommendation was not accepted— 

Then the member said today, “close quote”.

The trouble is, if you read the Canada Gazette it is not a closed quote. It actually goes on to say something else. The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands was wrong for two reasons. First, she was quoting from a summary of comments and responses to the gazetting of national security provisions in the summer of 2009. She was not quoting from the regulations themselves. Further, she cut the quote in half, as I just mentioned.

The full quote from those comments and replies is as follows. The Canada Gazette states:

4) The term national security should be explicitly defined and national security reviews should take place according to concrete, objective, and transparent criteria. This recommendation was not accepted since national security threats are dynamic in nature and, therefore, constantly evolve. Neither Part IV.1 of the ICA nor the Regulations define the term “national security” since future threats to national security cannot be predetermined and any such definition may limit the government’s flexibility to respond to future threats.

That is the complete quote.

However, that does not mean that national security provisions do not exist. How do I know that? Because they are not hard to find. We just have to grab a BlackBerry or an iPad and go to www.ic.gc.ca. If the hon. member wants, after we are done here she can come over and I can show it to her on my iPad. They have been there for more than two years. I would ask the member to go and read that section of the website and the associated regulations before getting up to ask her next incorrect question.

The post Foreign Investment (A) appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Elizabeth May, Green Party MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands and Leader of the Green Party of Canada, held a media conference in Ottawa today to outline her serious concerns about the federal government’s growing dependence on foreign money and influence in the oil sands and elsewhere – especially in light of Stephen Harper’s tour of China.

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“We are being told that the Harper government’s almost-desperate attempts to lure foreign money to Canada is business as usual, bringing needed investment, but there is much more at stake which requires public discussion,” said May.  “In fact, what I now call the China-Harper Axis of Oil has so many negative repercussions; I have had to prepare a short list, including everything from job loss to Syria.

“Canadians simply cannot and should not make the dramatic economic and social shifts Harper is aggressively orchestrating without more information.”

1. The oil and gas sector already has nearly two times the amount of foreign investment compared to the average in other areas of our economy with twice the percentage of profits leaving Canada. 
2. Concerning Chinese oil sands investments, estimates vary because of the lack of transparency, but it’s at least $12 billion and as much as $20 billion.  State-owned Sinopec, China`s second-largest oil producer and top refiner, is part of a consortium that has provided about $100 million to fund the Enbridge pipeline-and-tanker scheme`s regulatory and development costs in exchange for guaranteed shipment on the pipeline and an equity stake.
3. During the 2008 federal election campaign, Stephen Harper promised he wouldn’t export raw crude to countries with weaker environmental standards than Canada, protecting Canadian jobs.  With the Enbridge pipeline-and-tanker proposal, it has been estimated that more than 26,000 jobs will be lost because the bitumen will be refined in China, not Canada.
4. Not only jobs will be lost, but energy security and even national sovereignty are at stake.  As Anthony Campbell, former head of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat of the Privy Council Office, has pointed out:  “We are sitting ducks.”  We are losing our ability to control the oil sands and our energy future.  For example, when China’s state-owned enterprise Sinopec bought minority shares in Syncrude in 2010, it got the right to veto any Syncrude decision to keep jobs, upgrading, and refining in Canada. (See Terry Glavin’s article, Defenceless, in the Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, February 4.)
5. Even Enbridge has admitted that its pipeline will be of no benefit to Canada if it doesn’t secure the so-called “Asian Premium” – a higher crude price.  Economist and former CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, Robyn Allan stated in her submission to the National Energy Board Joint Review Panel:  “The upshot is that Canadian refinery demand … will have its market price determined as if the transactions for Canadian crude oil supply and demand take place in the Asian market.”  This will mean, says Allan, “a decrease in family purchasing power, higher prices for industries who use oil as an input … a decline in real GDP, decline in government revenues, increase in inflation and an increase in interest rates and further appreciation of the Canadian dollar.”
6. Canada will slowly become a petro state with all the negatives we’ve witnessed around the world.  Journalist Andrew Nikiforuk has written that Canada is moving in that direction.  He warns:  “Oil exporting nations, which run on oil loot instead of taxes, don`t function like real governments because over time they come to represent hydrocarbons the way plantation economies once championed slaveholders. Ultimately, most petro states, from Russia to Saudi Arabia, fear dissent, transparency, fair markets and good governance.”
7. The absurdity of so-called “Ethical Oil” is made transparent when you consider our increased, unquestioning partnership with China.  After all, China is also working closely with Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.  This fact also makes a mockery of any government concerns about “foreign” influence among opponents of the Enbridge/China pipeline.

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The above raises the following questions:

1. When China has access to more and more of our crude oil, it will be able to provide jobs and produce cheaper consumer goods for its people.  Why isn’t Harper doing for Canada what the Chinese government is doing for China?
2. How can Canada raise issues like human rights abuses in China and elsewhere when so many of our future development eggs are in the Chinese basket?  How can we strongly and credibly criticize China for its refusal to support the UN Resolution on Syria, for example?
3. Of course, the background to all my concerns is the fact that the planet is warming almost visibly.  The PM’s position in Durban was to reject the one legally binding instrument, the Kyoto Protocol, insisting we would only join in to an agreement that included China.  China, already having done more on climate change than Canada, insisted it would only take on targets if and when countries, such as Canada, signed up for a second commitment period under Kyoto.  Is the PM using his trip to China to take a substantial step to global climate action by committing to China that we will withdraw our letter of intent to withdraw from Kyoto?
4. Finally, I remember the time when Trudeau created Petro-Canada and its office in Calgary was referred to as Red Square.  Some Canadians were upset by Trudeau’s moves to nationalize our oil resources, but at least the nation that would have benefitted was Canada. Now, instead of Petro-Canada, it’s Petro-China, and instead of Ottawa nationalizing the Canadian oil and gas industry, it’s Beijing doing the nationalizing.

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Well, I am asking. How did this happen without public debate?

David Anderson: Madam Speaker, the premise of the member’s question is just rubbish. Our government is concentrating on what is important to Canadians, which is the environment and economic growth.

The fact is the oil sands are responsible for over 100,000 direct jobs across Canada. That number will grow to 700,000 jobs. That is how many jobs the opposition, the NDP member opposite and the Liberals say no to every time they oppose the development of the Canadian economy.

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