[BeaverFever]

The potash takeover was a HOSTILE foreign takeover though. If it had been a voluntary sale like the Nexen deal, the Conservatives would have probably waved it on through.

[OnTheIce]

martin14 martin14:

These are our resources. They should not be handed over lock, stock and barrel.

IMO, all oil production should be run by Canadian companies, foreigners
can invest, but not control more than 51% of the company,
and sales to foreign State run companies should be out.

Our resources aren't being handed over to anyone. They're still here and Canadians are working to sell them around the World.

I don't get this complex we have as Canadians to shy away from foreign investment or foreign companies setting up shop.

[BeaverFever]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

martin14 martin14:

These are our resources. They should not be handed over lock, stock and barrel.

IMO, all oil production should be run by Canadian companies, foreigners
can invest, but not control more than 51% of the company,
and sales to foreign State run companies should be out.

Our resources aren't being handed over to anyone. They're still here and Canadians are working to sell them around the World.

I don't get this complex we have as Canadians to shy away from foreign investment or foreign companies setting up shop.

Sounds like something the British Viceroy would've said to Ghandi.

[martin14]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

martin14 martin14:

These are our resources. They should not be handed over lock, stock and barrel.

IMO, all oil production should be run by Canadian companies, foreigners
can invest, but not control more than 51% of the company,
and sales to foreign State run companies should be out.

Our resources aren't being handed over to anyone. They're still here and Canadians are working to sell them around the World.

I don't get this complex we have as Canadians to shy away from foreign investment or foreign companies setting up shop.

I was talking about ownership and control, not investment.

[OnTheIce]

martin14 martin14:

I was talking about ownership and control, not investment.

Either way, what's the difference? The bank account where the profits are deposited and the losses are withdrawn from?

[saturn_656]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Our resources aren't being handed over to anyone. They're still here and Canadians are working to sell them around the World.

I don't get this complex we have as Canadians to shy away from foreign investment or foreign companies setting up shop.

CNOOC isn't another Exxon Mobil or Royal Shell. More accurate to consider it an arm of the People's Republic of China.

I don't have an issue with foreign oil companies, but I believe the gov't should keep foreign governments from setting up shop here. The Chinese Communist Party has no place in the oil patch.

[Thanos]

I don't know what to think on this one. As long as safety and envirinmental standards are maintained and wages aren't driven down then the logical thing is to look at them as another employer. This seems to be a grey-area situation where the govt was trapped because the existing rules hadn't caught up to the reality on the ground. Maybe the best way to do it is to tell the foreigners (including the Americans too) is that they can invest and they can even own but under no circumstances whatsoever are they allowed to manage. If they aren't allowed to be involved in direct day-to-day operations and management the the chances of an eco- or safety-disaster are greatly reduced.

Mom's flipping out over this. Mostly it's a racial thing, which is either funny or sad depending on your POV. But she's been a FOX/SUN junkie for so long now that its impossible to speak to her rationally about anything anymore.

[BeaverFever]

Thanos Thanos:

I don't know what to think on this one. As long as safety and envirinmental standards are maintained and wages aren't driven down then the logical thing is to look at them as another employer. This seems to be a grey-area situation where the govt was trapped because the existing rules hadn't caught up to the reality on the ground. Maybe the best way to do it is to tell the foreigners (including the Americans too) is that they can invest and they can even own but under no circumstances whatsoever are they allowed to manage. If they aren't allowed to be involved in direct day-to-day operations and management the the chances of an eco- or safety-disaster are greatly reduced.

Mom's flipping out over this. Mostly it's a racial thing, which is either funny or sad depending on your POV. But she's been a FOX/SUN junkie for so long now that its impossible to speak to her rationally about anything anymore.

Honestly I think the concerns are opposite. A domestically owned corporation is not any more concerned about the welfare of workers or the environment than a foreign owned one, the bottom line and the share price is king for any business. Anyone who thinks that Canadian owners/managers will do better out of some sense of patriotism is kidding themselves. Business is business, always has been. And the laws of the land apply regardless who owns or runs the show. In fact, local ownership/management probably means the company's leadership will be better connected to political parties and therefore its practices will have less scrutiny and less severe punishment for violations while the company will be more effective in lobbying to eliminate any pesky laws in its way. So day-to-day I dont see muchdifference

OTOH, when it comes to broader policy decisions, such as the feds energy policy, trade policy, etc, a foreign-owned business could have a different agenda than a domestic one, particularly where the foreign owner is from a consumer country like China instead of a producer country like Canada. To the extent that governments, particularly conservative ones, base their policy decisions on demands from the business lobby, we could find ourselves with colonial-type economic policies that primarily serve the interests of other countries. In other words, more 'hewers of wood, drawers of water' and 'America's Pantry' type of policy-making could occur.

[Thanos]

With heavy industry dying out in the rest of North America it's more than safe to say that the same phenomenon will never happen in Western Canada. Aside from the pressure equipment manufacturers in Edmonton and Calgary that are already servicing the oil/gas sector we'll probably always remain commodity based. High tech might be returning to the US but I can't see Alberta, or any other part of Canada either, ever being in the big plans for the newer types of manufacturing, at least never on a massive enough scale that it makes a permanent alteration in regional economic patterns the way the auto industry did for the Great Lakes provinces and states.

[BeaverFever]

Thanos Thanos:

With heavy industry dying out in the rest of North America it's more than safe to say that the same phenomenon will never happen in Western Canada. Aside from the pressure equipment manufacturers in Edmonton and Calgary that are already servicing the oil/gas sector we'll probably always remain commodity based. High tech might be returning to the US but I can't see Alberta, or any other part of Canada either, ever being in the big plans for the newer types of manufacturing, at least never on a massive enough scale that it makes a permanent alteration in regional economic patterns the way the auto industry did for the Great Lakes provinces and states.

Right, but do we want those commodity-related policies (which again, are largely defined by the businesses in those sectors) to be based on the interests of Canadian-based commodity producers or on the interests of a foreign commodity consumer who owns our business?

[uwish]

martin14 martin14:

uwish uwish:

why is this a mistake? did you know that over 80% of Nexen's assets are NOT in Canada anyway? plus the agreement was conditional to not moving headquarters etc.

These are our resources. They should not be handed over lock, stock and barrel.

IMO, all oil production should be run by Canadian companies, foreigners
can invest, but not control more than 51% of the company,
and sales to foreign State run companies should be out.

I understand my ideas are probably 20 years out of date, but I have seen
what has been done in Eastern Europe, and it isn't pretty to watch what little
sovereignty these countries had has been seriously stripped away.

We might as well stop hiding and ask the Chinese gov't to open their
Ministry office in Calgary, they can put a loudspeaker on the building
and broadcast their propaganda.
It's the same thing, and at least people will see what's really going on.


You supported the Wheat Board to protect Canadian farmers, but are happy
to let our oil walk right out the door ?

first of all these are NOT Canadian resources! and not really even Nexen resouces. Over 80% of all Nexen's assets are located outside of Canada. Those resources belong to the nations; Nexen is only allowed to develop those resources, same with the 20% Canadian resources, Nexen only has a license to develop in which they pay fee's for to their owners..

If the governments decided to stop their operator license they could do so without penalty.

[bootlegga]

I'm torn on this one, but I don't really see the difference between letting the Chinese run this company instead of the fatcats on Wall Street (had Nexen been bought by an American company).

Either way, this boils down to the key fact is that there simply isn't enough private capital in Canada to fully develop the oil sands.

So, if we are going to do so, we need to look to foreign investors to pony up the dough. With American production increasing, it's probably getting harder and harder to convince backers to invest in oils sands production when they can invest in the Bakken field and make higher profits (due to lower upfront costs and higher prices of the oil produced).

[peck420]

Thanos Thanos:

With heavy industry dying out in the rest of North America it's more than safe to say that the same phenomenon will never happen in Western Canada. Aside from the pressure equipment manufacturers in Edmonton and Calgary that are already servicing the oil/gas sector we'll probably always remain commodity based. High tech might be returning to the US but I can't see Alberta, or any other part of Canada either, ever being in the big plans for the newer types of manufacturing, at least never on a massive enough scale that it makes a permanent alteration in regional economic patterns the way the auto industry did for the Great Lakes provinces and states.

This only holds true if you have never been too, or looked around, Alberta.

Just because oil is growing at an obscene rate does not mean that other sectors aren't growing by leaps and bounds as well.

There is a reason that oil/commodities are occupying less and less of a share of Alberta's GDP.

As a small example, here is a simple breakdown on Alberta's capital investments from 2011:

Institution: $8.9 Billion
Housing: $13.4 Billion
Energy $26.2 Billion
Non-Energy: $25 Billion
Total: $73.5 Billion

Now compare that to pre recession levels (2008):

Institution: $8.5 Billion
Housing: $13.4 Billion
Energy: $42.7 Billion
Non-Energy: $25.2 Billion
Total: $89.8 Billion

Expect it to shift even further from energy to non-energy over the next decade...drastically.

[Lemmy]

Let whomever wants a piece of the oil sands in. Let 'em suck the whole goddamn thing dry. The sooner we've burned our last drop of oil, the better off this planet will be. We need a few billion Asians on the oil-tit to help us get rid of the shit and, since they're willing to pay for it, even better.