4am in a bar - the leaders of the *free world*

Steve : Just say "I stand with Saudi Arabia" a bunch of times, wait for the press to repeat it, and there ya go. Canada! Fuck Yeah! Comin' again to save the motherfuckin' day, yeah ...

Barry, Tony, Dave: No. No. No.

Barry : Look, Steve, I know that 'I stand with whoever ' line works for you up there in Canada but picture me going home and saying : "You know that country that 15 out of 19 hijackers came from that bombed the WTO on 9/11 ? Remember them? Well, funny thing - they've gone and got themselves into a bit of a jam by funding ISIS, another made-in-Al Qaeda group, so we're going to help them out here by going back into Iraq again to bomb their batshit out-of-control wahhabi-zombies before they start WWIII." 

Tony : You have to admit it would be pretty fucking awesome to put it out there like that.

Barry : Yeah, hi-larious. No, leave the Saudis out of this.

Dave : What we need is some kind of babies being thrown out of incubators onto the floor thing like we had for Kuwait.

Steve : Do they have to be brown babies again? Couldn't we use something bad happening  to white people this time? Kinda makes it more immediate for folks back home. Also we need reports of ISIS about to attack us at home. 

Barry : No problem - minor logistics. But we're also going to need heroes, people that our voters can really get behind and cheer for. 

Dave : What about hot chicks in camo with guns?

Tony, Steve : WTF? Get outta here.

Dave : No really. There's this battalion of guerrilla Kurd female fighters spanning Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria.  Some of them - very hot. Plus, the peshmerga commander of Kurdish forces in Kobani is a woman.

Barry : ... "The female fighters defying ISIS - mothers, wives, daughters - risking their lives every day to protect their homes and families" ...  Yeah, that could work.

Tony : I've heard of them. Didn't they evacuate thousands of Yazidis under attack from ISIS? - an operation I believe you took credit for, Barry. Fuckin' doomed now though, aren't they, eh? Pinned down defending Kobani for three weeks with their ammo running out and Kerry says meh to those hot peshmerga and PKK chicks. 

Steve : PKK? The Kurdistan Workers Party? Wait, aren't they ... terrorists? Aren't they Marxists?

Barry : Who gives a shit, Steve? It's not like they're going to win - we'll just drop some bombs on some empty buildings out in the desert and everybody goes home happy.

Dave : Speaking of going home ... I've got an early flight out of here in the morning - time to call it a night.

Steve : Already? We should really do this more often, guys. Hey, have any of you ever met a real Bilderburger - you know, one of the guys actually named Bilderburg?

Barry : Say goodnight, Steve.
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Why are we in Vietnam Iraq/Syria?

Bloomberg : Syria-to-Ukraine Wars Send U.S. Defense Stocks to Records :

"Led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world. 

President Barack Obama approved open-ended airstrikes this month while ruling out ground combat. 

 “To the extent we can shift away from relying on troops and rely more heavily on equipment -- that could present an opportunity.” [enthused a chief investment officer who oversees $66 billion including Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Co.] 

Investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.

Lockheed, the world’s biggest defense company, reached an all-time high of $180.74 on Sept. 19, when Northrop, Raytheon Co.and General Dynamics Corp. also set records. That quartet and Chicago-based Boeing accounted for about $105 billion in federal contract orders last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In its first night of airstrikes into Syria, the U.S. dropped about 200 munitions and launched 47 Raytheon-made Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to U.S. Central Command. The military also deployed Boeing’s GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions and Hellfire missiles from Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, creating an opening for restocking U.S. arsenals."

Meanwhile, stop me if you've also heard this one before ... From the LA Times, yesterday :

"Iraqi news outlets reported Monday that at least 18 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in an airstrike on a town under siege by fighters from the extremist group Islamic State.  Hit’s general hospital received 18 bodies, including three women and eight children, all killed in an airstrike.  

Maj. Curtis J.  Kellogg, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said there was “no evidence” of civilian casualties in Hit."

And so it goes ...

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Harperism : From Harper and Hayek to Koch and Coyne

Neo-liberalism : trickle-down, deregulating, deunionizing, globalizing free market privatization of government.

When Stephen Harper was studying under the "Calgary school" in the 80's, he became so enamored with the neo-liberalism of Austrian philosopher Friedrich von Hayek - guru to Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the Chicago boys, the IMF, and the WTO - it formed the basis of his 1991 political economics thesis. 

Why, wondered Harper at the time, did the conservative revolution of Thatcher and Reagan bypass Canada and what could be done about it?

Happily, the Mont Pelerin Society - founded by Hayek and Milton Friedman of the Chicago School, and featuring Charles Koch CEO of Koch Industries as a board member - was there to help, founding and funding a plethora of free market think tanks in Canada via the corporate-funded neo-liberal prototype, the Institute of Economic Affairs in London UK. 

The Charles Koch Foundation on their Fraser Institute grant funding page :

"Since its inception twenty-five years ago at a series of conferences hosted by Milton Friedman and Michael Walker [executive director of the Fraser Institute from its inception in 1974], the Economic Freedom of the World Index has been used as a reliable measure of economic freedom in countries around the world."

As Donald Gutstein explains in Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada, this transformation was achieved through what Hayek called *professional second-hand dealers* - "newspaper columnists and editorial writers who parrot reports by neoliberal think tanks such as the Fraser Institute, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Montreal Economic Institute, and Atlantic Institute for Market Studies."

As it happens, the heads of all those think tanks he mentions :

• Michael Walker, founding Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute; 
• Brian Lee Crowley, founding President of Atlantic Institute for Market Studies [Atlantica!!!], and Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute;
• Peter Holle, President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy;
• Michel Kelly Gagnon, CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute

are themselves all members of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Funding to link think tanks, politicians, and journalists comes from corporations and U.S. donors, but also Canadian billionaires like Peter Munk of Barrick Gold and his Aurea Foundation.
DeSmogBlog : 

The Aurea Foundation was founded by Peter Munk, the head of Barrick Gold, and is a major funder of a small but influential network of free-market think tanks in Canada, including: The Fraser Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the Frontier Center for Public Policy, the Montreal Economic Institute and the MacDonald Laurier Institute.

Gosh, same bunch again.

National Post columnist/CBC political analyst/Manning Centre for Democracy advisor Andrew Coyne is a director at Aurea Foundation, along with former National Post editor Ken Whyte and, up until he became Stephen Harper's chief of staff, Nigel Wright.  

Hayek devotee, former advisor at the federal Department of Finance in 2007-8, and Coyne's friend, Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute is also particularly ubiquitous in promedia. Crowley has written regular columns for the Ottawa Citizen and G&M (where he spent two years on the editorial board) expounding on subjects dear to Harper : why all of Canada benefits from the tarsands, why we need more foreign investment, the benefits of two-tier healthcare and tankers off the westcoast, and why inequality is no biggie because poverty is a matter of character.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hosted a private fund-raising dinner for Macdonald-Laurier Institute, advising invited corporate executives that he was giving MLI his personal backing and "I hope you will consider doing the same."

Charlie Smith at the Georgia Straight interviewed Gutstein two days ago :

"Gutstein makes the case that neoliberalism is far more sinister than simply having a desire for smaller government. A central tenet of his new book is that Harper is undermining democracy by marshalling the power of government to create and enforce markets where they’ve never existed before.

“He’s gradually moving the country from one that’s based on democracy to one that’s based on the market, which means that the decisions are not made by our duly elected representatives through the laws that they pass and the regulations that they enact,” Gutstein says."

Coyne responded : 

You can buy Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada directly from Lorimer Publishing. 

Book launch with expert panel on issues raised by the book and hosted by the author - Wednesday October 8, 5:30 to 7:30pm at SFU Harbour Centre 

OK, if you must have a sneak peak, here's a few pages on former Liberal leadership hopeful Martha Hall Findlay at the Calgary School of Public Policy advising Harper how he could successfully dump supply management without losing any votes in order to ease Canada's entry into the investor rights deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. 
The "second-hand dealers" went absolutely apeshit for that one.
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Edited @ 11:15 for clarity

Monday update : Well this will help to cloister the second hand dealers....

The Tyee : Postmedia could soon own almost every English newspaper in Canada. What could possibly go wrong?

Tyee also has an excerpt from Gutstein's book up today : Meet the people who made possible Stephen Harper's reign.

which in turn leads to this from Andrew Mitrovica :  The Hill media war chorus clears its throat … politely
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Khorasan Group : First there was Mothra ...

Both Syria and Iraq have requested the US not to bomb the shit out of them over ISIS, a group posing no imminent threat to the US, so pretty much the only way Nobel Peace Prize President BamBam could justify doing so would be on the grounds of US self-defence and 3...2...1... voilà ... 

BamBam : “Once again, it must be clear to anyone who would plot against America and try to do Americans harm that we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people.”

And just like that ISIS is sidelined by the newest biggest worstest previously unknown group in the history of the world EVAH - Khorasanus Rex!

However, the following day, after the story had worked its magical justification for bombing Syria ...

Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept : THE FAKE TERROR THREAT USED TO JUSTIFY BOMBING SYRIA

Democracy Now interview with Murtaza Hussain : How the U.S. Concocted a Terror Threat to Justify Syria Strikes, and the Corporate Media Went Along

Chris Hedges : Becoming Hezbollah's Air Force

"In endless war it does not matter whom we fight. Endless war is not about winning battles or promoting a cause. It is an end in itself. In George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” Oceania is at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia. The alliance then suddenly is reversed. Eurasia becomes an ally of Oceania and Eastasia is the enemy. The point is not who is being fought. The point is maintaining a state of fear and the mass mobilization of the public. War and national security are used to justify the surrender of citizenship, the crushing of dissent and expanding the powers of the state. The point is war itself. And if the American state, once a sworn enemy of Hezbollah, gives air cover to Hezbollah fighters in Syria, the goals of endless war remain gloriously untouched."

h/t Waterbaby for Intercept link      h/t Intercept for NBC tweets.
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Steve, plumping for wartime PM

Yesterday at Goldman Sachs in New York in a Q&A with the WSJ editor, Harper seemed keen to give the impression that the US had taken the initiative and come to Canada cap in hand requesting further military contribution in the fight against ISIS in Iraq :



Transcript excerpt :

WSJ : "Would you rule out a military contribution to any effort?"

Harper :"I haven't ruled out ... we haven't ruled out anything."

WSJ : "Has the United States formally asked you to contribute?"

Harper : "The United States just recently in the last couple of days has asked for some additional contribution and we're weighing our response to that."

WSJ : "What are they looking for? More logistical support? More direct military support?"

Harper : "Since they didn't release the letter publicly, I'm not going to do that. I'll just say the Government of Canada will make a decision on that very shortly."

Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson also gave that impression in the House today:

"We've been very clear - we just recently received this request from the US and of course we will review it."

However, also today : U.S. says Canada offered to help in Iraq – not the other way around

"The United States government says it was Canada that asked what more it could do to help in Iraq – an offer that led to the letter Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he recently received from the U.S. requesting further military help in the fight against ISIS."

Were they referring to this back on August 12? : Harper offers ‘additional help’ to Obama in phone call over crisis in Iraq

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed strong support for U.S. air strikes in Iraq during a telephone conversation today with U.S. President Barack Obama ... and expressed Canada’s willingness to do more on the humanitarian aid front."

Or perhaps this editorial by Harper and Stockwell Day about their eagerness to participate in what became a nine year cakewalk in Iraq, published by the Wall Street Journal in 2003:  
Canadians Stand With You : 

"Today, the world is at war. A coalition of countries under the leadership of the U.K. and the U.S. is leading a military intervention to disarm Saddam Hussein. Yet Prime Minister Jean Chretien has left Canada outside this multilateral coalition of nations.

This is a serious mistake. For the first time in history, the Canadian government has not stood beside its key British and American allies in their time of need. The Canadian Alliance -- the official opposition in parliament -- supports the American and British position because we share their concerns, their worries about the future if Iraq is left unattended to, and their fundamental vision of civilization and human values. Disarming Iraq is necessary for the long-term security of the world, and for the collective interests of our key historic allies and therefore manifestly in the national interest of Canada. Make no mistake, as our allies work to end the reign of Saddam and the brutality and aggression that are the foundations of his regime, Canada's largest opposition party, the Canadian Alliance will not be neutral. In our hearts and minds, we will be with our allies and friends. And Canadians will be overwhelmingly with us.

But we will not be with the Canadian government.

Modern Canada was forged in large part by war -- not because it was easy but because it was right. In the great wars of the last century -- against authoritarianism, fascism, and communism -- Canada did not merely stand with the Americans, more often than not we led the way. We did so for freedom, for democracy, for civilization itself. These values continue to be embodied in our allies and their leaders, and scorned by the forces of evil, including Saddam Hussein and the perpetrators of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That is why we will stand -- and I believe most Canadians will stand with us -- for these higher values which shaped our past, and which we will need in an uncertain future."

Messrs. Harper and Day are the leader and shadow foreign minister, respectively, of the Canadian Alliance. 

But no, according to CBC tonight, it was indeed the August phone call : Canada mulls deploying CF-18 jets to join U.S.-led strikes

"The federal cabinet will meet next week to discuss deploying Canada's CF-18 fighter jets to join a U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Sources tell CBC News U.S. President Barack Obama brought the idea of an air war conducted by an international coalition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in August and asked for Canada 's support."

So will Steve finally get his wish to become a war time president PM?
Hey, unlikely anything else would have got Dubya re-elected.
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Update : "If there's a combat mission, I think the prime minister has always been very clear, that would go before Parliament for a vote, that has not changed," Baird told reporters at the United Nations on Thursday, shortly before Stephen Harper spoke to the assembly...

UN screencap via Ben Parsons
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Thing is - Paul Calandra is right

Boris    Buckdog   Lorne   Montreal Simon   Canadian Cynic   Kev   Stephen Lautens   Aaron Wherry  

Paul Calandra responds :  

Harper's Parliamentary Secretary Paul Calandra is pleased to use Israel as a shield to avoid answering Mulcair's questions in the House of Commons about Canadian troop deployment in Iraq and we are all rightly appalled at both him and Andrew Scheer.

And yet ... thing is - Calandra is right. 

Questions about the current Canadian mission in Iraq *are* always about "Israel", the Cons' preferred collective term for the various neocon government officials that they like there. 

In 1996, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, who went on to attain key positions in the George W. Bush administration, were working in an Israeli thinktank for Benjamin Netanyahu on Clean Break : A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It recommended reshaping the Middle East through the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and "the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare". Chaos and destabilization of the whole region, according to their "skittles theory", is the entire point. 

How's that working out so far? When will our Con neocons outgrow their slavering support for a two decades old strategy written in Israel and all the horror of endless reprisals and sectarian warfare it has wreaked on the world since?

Here, on Sept 12 2002 prior to the US invasion of Iraq and the Second Intifitada, Harper's BFF Netanyahu testifies to the US House of Representatives that Saddam Hussein is working on weapons of mass destruction and atomic bombs and urges them to invade Iraq to protect the USA. Nine year *cakewalk* ensues.

Calandra is right that the Con answer to questions about Canadian troop deployment to Iraq is to "stand up for Israel" - although in all likelihood, reading off his little paper from the PMO, he doesn't know why.

Update : The further adventures of Paul Calandra... Power and Politics tonight. 

Evan Solomon : "Do you think it’s your responsibility when you’re answering questions on behalf of the Prime Minister to at least make an attempt to answer on the topic you’re asked, as opposed to completely changing the topic?"

Calandra : "Well, I disagree with you that the topic was changed. The question was about foreign affairs, the question was about our fight against ISIL"

Meanwhile, Harper chose to announce a US request for further Canadian military involvement in Iraq from New York in an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal before a live audience at Goldman Sachs.
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Friday update : Calandra gives weepy apology to the House and takes full responsibility.

"But sources tell CBC News that Calandra was handed material by Alykhan Velshi, director of issues management in the PMO, during the Conservatives' daily preparation for question period and was told to use it in his answer no matter what question was asked in the House."

So if CBC's sources are correct, first they ordered him to do it; then they made him take the fall for it and lie about it. 

Alykhan Velshi - American Enterprise Institute intern, dcomm to Jason Kenney and Baird, Ethical Oil head, Harper's planning director.
Awesome. 

In 2005 Alykhan was an intern at AEI, home to some of the scholars behind the Clean Break strategy for Netanyahu. 

At the time they wrote it in 1997, Velshi literally was in "short pants" but he has since written articles advocating their position re support for Israel and pre-emptive war on Iraq.

Photo : Velshi with Jeane Kirkpatrick at AEI.
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National Monument to Victims of ...

Sept 23, 2015 : Reactions were mixed today as the long awaited National Victims Monument was unveiled on Parliament Hill, but the winning designer couldn't be more pleased with the final result. 

"I was playing with my infant son when the inspiration for the design just came to me", he told assembled reporters. 

After cutting the ribbon and posing for photos, Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched a blistering Cold War style attack on the evils of communism saying its “poisonous ideology and ruthless practices slowly bled into countries around the world. ... That's why we need this monument."

"Hey, if the Communists had not fought so hard and taken such heavy losses there is a good chance we would have lost the second world war," shouted one aged veteran as he was dragged away by security personnel.

The bright red monument can be disassembled for cleaning and features a special plastic finish designed to facilitate the easy removal of graffiti.
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FIPA apples don't fall far from the tree

That one hour trade committee meeting in 2012 that comprised the entirety of public and parliamentary interaction with the Canada-China FIPA provided only a single witness -- Ian Burney, assistant deputy minister for DFAIT’s trade policy and negotiations branch, and some support staff.

Ian Burney is the son of Derek Burney, former Mulroney chief of staff/ NAFTA negotiator and former head of Harper's transition team in 2006, former Canadian ambassador to the US and former Vice Chair of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE). 
A tireless plumper for increased North American economic and security integration, Derek Burney is also a director at TransCanada and Chairman of International Advisory Board at GardaWorld, "one of the world’s largest privately owned security companies" with operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia, Haiti, Kurdistan, Libya, and Yemen.

Burney père has recently been writing editorials in Canadian media in support of FIPA although CCCE enthusiasm for increased trade with China goes way back.

Burney fils, during his brief Canada-China FIFA briefing to the 2012 trade committee, was obviously proud of both the deal made - the biggest in Canada since his dad worked on NAFTA - and the wide support it enjoyed. Ian Burney :

"There have been public expressions of support from the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, from the CCCE, from the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, from the Canada China Business Council, and the list goes on, including a number of the larger companies that have investments in China now.

I'm not aware of any negative commentary that's come from the business community in Canada."

So we're all good then. Anybody who was anybody liked it.

Except for recent complaints in the G&M two days ago from Chinese state-owned businesses (SOEs) operating in Canada that "Canadian labour costs are too high so they should be able to import their own workers" and also that the "regulatory approval process for resource projects takes far too long and could almost certainly be streamlined and made more efficient", something the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association had already done for them.    G&M :

“Most of the executives we polled expressed dissatisfaction with what they saw as unfair treatment of Chinese SOEs in Canada,” Mr. Zhang wrote, noting that they thought the media did not portray them fairly and that the Canadian public seemed to dislike their investments here, even though they received government support."

Funny thing, that.
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Canada-China FIPA Environmental Assessment

Prior to the enactment of the Canada-China FIPA, the Canadian government pushed two omnibus bills through the HoC which included provisions designed to substantially weaken environment policies and regulations, some of them at the behest of a pipeline lobby group : 

G&M : Pipeline industry pushed environmental changes made in omnibus bill

"The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association met with senior government officials in the fall of 2011, urging them [...] to streamline environmental assessments but also to bring in “new regulations under [the] Navigable Waters Protection Act. ... 

In the end, they got almost everything they wanted."

Now we can't put those protections back again for 31 years if they happen to irritate China. But let's look at the "streamlined" environmental assessment done on the FIPA two years ago.  It's a stunner.

There are three stages in conducting an environmental assessment for a trade negotiation like Canada-China FIPA to determine what impact it will have on Canada: 
1) an Initial EA, 2) a Draft EA, and 3) a Final EA.

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT)
Final Environmental Assessment of the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA)  October 23, 2012

"An Initial Environmental Assessment of the Canada-China FIPA was completed in January 2008. The Government of Canada opened the Initial EA for public comments from February 20 to March 21, 2008. No public comments were received."

So if, like Arthur Dent, you were sitting round in your dressing gown and you didn't happen to know about your one month window of opportunity to comment on a government website about the selling out of your country in 2008, whose fault is that exactly?

"In the light of the Initial EA’s conclusions regarding the unlikelihood of significant environmental impacts in Canada, preparation of a Draft EA was subsequently deemed to be unnecessary.... In this Final EA, the claim that no significant environmental impacts are expected based on the introduction of a Canada-China FIPA are upheld."

Wait. What? "No significant environmental impacts"? 
According to the same EA, there was a 92.4% increase in Chinese investment in Canada from 2008 to 2011. How do you figure there's no accompanying environmental impact from promoting an even greater influx of capital? 

* "As new flows of investment from China into Canada (or Canada into China) cannot be directly attributed to the presence of a FIPA, there can be no causal relationship found between the implementation of such a treaty and environmental impacts in Canada. It is for this reason that the claim made in the Initial EA, that no significant environmental impacts are expected based on the introduction of a Canada-China FIPA, is upheld." *

Wha?  Ok, let me try this one on my own.
If it can't be proven that the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement successfully achieves the goal stated right there in its title of promoting and thereby increasing investment, then FIPA can't be blamed for any environmental impacts.
Therefore there won't be any.

I think the Vogons must have written up this particular EA.

Putting FIPA in context :



Also ... Gus Van Harten in The Tyee : Breaking Down the Harm to Canada Done by Treaty with China 
and at DeSmogBlog : China Investment Treaty "a Straitjacket" for Canada


And I'd missed this angle previously. Canadians thinking of opening a business in China, take note...

In the G&M, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and special adviser to the Alberta government says Steve's sudden ratification of FIPA in advance of his visit to China in November is connected to needing a barter chip to free two Canadian Christian missionaries jailed in China. 
Kevin and Julia Dawn Garratt, who have operated a cafe in China for three decades, were arrested for spying in retaliation, he suggests, for "Ottawa publicly blaming Beijing this summer for the hacking of Canadian government computers". 

"Kevin Garratt is a devout, active Christian who says that God called him to open a cafe in Dandong."

Previously : Clampetts clownshow distracts from FIPA
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Clampetts clownshow distracts from FIPA

Gosh, was it only five years ago that Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle said "Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta", even as Harper was blowing off the Kyoto Accord, supposedly due to China's crappy environmental record, and pledging to build a monument to victims of communism? 

Beginning Oct 1 for the next 31 years until 2045, under the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement Harper just ratified on Friday, Chinese corporations will be able to directly sue the Canadian government for any public interest measures that interfere with their ability to make a profit in Canada. 

Do you think China-owned Nexen, Sinopec, and PetroChina just might consider Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline to be somewhat integral to getting their $30B investment in the tarsands home to China for refining?  
Think Steve can count on Christy Clark to ensure no BC environmental protection laws might harm China's assets?
Think it's an accident Steve released this news on a Friday during the Ford brothers' Clampett Dynasty pitch?

Two years ago in Vladivostok, Harper announced his signing of the FIPA deal with China. MP Don Davies introduced a motion in the House to not ratify it. His motion failed. All the Libs and Cons voted against his motion not to ratify FIPA, including 24 Con MPs from Alberta and 19 from BC.  
You can contact those quislings through this HoC page showing that vote.

NDP Petition : Stop FIPA Now     
Green Party Petition : Stand Up to the Sellout to China          
LeadNow Petition : Stop the Secretive, Reckless & Binding Canada-China FIPA


Council of Canadians : Harper government sneaks through Canada-China FIPA despite ongoing court challenge

The Tyee : FIPA 'is the price China demanded to open its purse strings for investing in the resource sector in Canada.' and 

Harper's Sneaky, Undemocratic, Terrible Deal with China 

Montreal Simon : Stephen Harper and the Great Chinese Betrayal 

Update : Laila Yuile : Who's Harper working for?



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