The local MP Larry Miller’s comments on the Canada-China investment deal are an insult to the intelligence of voters in Grey/Bruce. To say we “misunderstand” and the deal is, “to protect Canadian interests who are investing in China,” is ludicrous when we have nothing of consequence there to protect and little hope of ever getting any in the forseeable future out of the closed state-run Chinese economy.
The Honourable MP knows this as he reveals in a later slip of the tongue saying. “China is not allowing the same thing.” The truly big investment is all one way, China into Canada and that’s really what FIPA( Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement) is there to protect.
Really Mr Miller, what do you take us for? Or more to the point what have the Chinese taken you and your government for? They have proven themselves to be very canny capitalists in out-negotiating you on this one by including what in corporate parlance is a form of a poison pill. The slightest piece of legislation we pass (i.e. tax, environmental etc.) which they in their wisdom deem to affect not just their net revenue, but their expected profit would give them cause to sue for unlimited damages and in secret tribunal no less! It ties our hands and hamstrings us in almost every regard with respect to a vital resource asset that is Canadian and on its soil — or might I say what is about to be a piece of Chinese soil.
It’s not the Chinese foreign investment that is the issue here (that is welcome), but rather the surreptitious part of this deal, the FIPA, which has been kept out of the public view and buried as part of a larger omnibus bill in the hopes it will slide by with little scrutiny. To make lame excuses now it’s been discovered to the effect that if we block it Canada will be seen as “not open for business” smacks of Party whipping if not political cover up and the voters aren’t going to buy it.
By all means Mr Miller, go back to the table and do the deal, but above board this time without the poison pill and with a view to protecting Canada’s national interests first instead of those of a foreign multi-national.
Paul Pepperall
504843 Grey Road 1
Kemble , Ont 519-534-3692
