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Originally Posted by Slava
Well I'm really of two minds here. First a large part of me thinks that the Chinese would not let us buy a company and do this in China (and there are other countries as well who operate like that), so why would we allow it here? The other side of me says that shareholders should be able to sell their shares to whomever they see fit. That's the market and the government should stay out.
The conservatives (small "c") have really been on this for years though. If you look back to the 80's and early 90's we had the Alberta Energy Corporation. This was setup by Lougheed and he did this for one simple reason; so that citizens here could share in the wealth of our resources. Yes, I know "we get royalties" from the foreign corporations, and thats great. Those foreign corporations though are here for one reason, and one reason only. They make money. So if everyone else comes here and turns a profit, you have to ask yourself....how dumb are we? The whole "not in the business of being in business" line we heard for years is just foolish ideology. The people of this generation and the next deserve better.
The AEC was sold by Klein (for a pittance!) when he was on his ideological bender to pay the debt ASAP. For those who don't know the AEC today is Encana and Cenovus; still two significant corporations in our provincial economy.
I can't say I'm entirely against foreign direct investment here, I just wish we were smart enough to get a piece of the action as opposed to letting every other state-owned company benefit will we provide the infrastructure. Its a terrible mistake.
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Agreed. The Chinese government protects its interests staunchly and puts them first. If Canada's not doing the same then Canadians are going to lose out on deals with China. It's especially worrying when natural resources are Canada's most important factor for sustaining significance in a global market long-term.
Foreign direct investment is a good thing, but dealings around that type of investment need to be very shrewd.