Quote:
Originally Posted by Zarley
The only major deal that the Conservatives killed was the BHP takeover of Potashcorp, which was done at the insistence of Brad Wall amidst a silly populist revolt. Obviously a stupid decision, but it hardly equates to "effectively banning foreign ownership of resource companies." In fact, FDI in Canada increased by 86% over Harper's premiership, with the resource sector responsible for a major portion of that.
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This was actually the right move in the long run. BHP (Australian based) is a massive mining company with their fingers in multiple areas to diversify against huge hits in any one commodity area. They're not a potash company, they're a mining company.
The significance was Potash Corp (PCS) was another diversification for them. Given the current Potash market it is not far fetched to think they would have already shuttered many of the Potash mines PCS owned, many in Saskatchewan.
In the long run PCS is merging with another major Canadian player in Agrium to form Nutrien. The end product if the deal closes later this year is the largest fertilizer company in the world ($30 B+), a Canadian one, and with two head offices in Saskatoon and Calgary. Most significant is that Nutrien will have 2/3 of the world potash supply. Which will help fight off the Russians who are dumping the stuff on the market, and most likely save mines from closing.
Long and short, we can agree that it was right thing for wrong reasons, but in this case it very much was a smart move for Saskchewan, Calgary, and Canada in particular.