A colleague asked me this week about the China-Canada Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement that will come into force on Oct. 1.
This agreement has a minimum duration of 15 years with no exit clause. The government can keep legal actions undertaken through the agreement secret. There was no public consultation. It wasn't even debated by Parliament.
My colleague wanted to know if Prime Minister Harper is nuts. I found myself in the strange position of defending the Mr. Harper. No, he is not nuts.
However, he does have a view of Canada that is biased in a particular way. Indeed, it would seem his whole government subscribes to his views.
Consider the comments of International Trade Minister Ed Fast: "Investment agreements provide the protection and the confidence Canadian investors need to expand, grow, and succeed abroad. We remain committed to opening new markets around the world for Canadian companies, including the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region. This FIPA will create jobs and economic opportunities for Canadians in every region of this country."
The agreement provides a framework for legal obligations and rights intended to enhance foreign investment - by Canadians in China and by the Chinese in Canada.
All of this might sound good but how does it benefit the average Canadian? Most Canadians don't own companies so how does opening "new markets around the world" benefit them?
Most Canadians are investors through their pension plant but they are not seeking the "protection and the confidence" needed "to expand, grow, and succeed abroad". The sort of Canadian with sufficient funds to take advantage of such business opportunities are few and far between. One could make the argument that the only Canadians with the resources to take advantage of this agreement are Canadian businesses.
Perhaps I am misreading the prime minister's intentions or maybe it is his ministers that are off course, but it seems to me that Mr. Harper and his colleagues perpetually conflate Canada and Canadian business. It seems that the mantra is: "If it is good for business, it is good for the country."
I am not going to argue anyone wants life to be bad for businesses. Far from it. The economic model we subscribe to is based on the concept of free enterprise and a free market.
But Canada is not simply the sum total of all of the Canadian businesses. Our economy is not the sum total of corporations. There is much more to this country than business interests.
And what is good for business is not always good for the country. The opposite is also true in that sometimes what is good for the country is going to be bad for business.
In considering free trade agreements or foreign investment agreements, I would hope that the principle around which they are constructed is "what is best for the people of Canada?" and not "what is best for business?
I know that the argument can be made that without business, we wouldn't have jobs, and without jobs, we would not have money, and without money, we couldn't buy food, and then we would all starve to death. Strangely enough, though, humanity survived for hundreds of thousands of years without businesses and for that matter without money.
These are not inevitable truths.
We also need to remember that what is not good for one business might be great for another.
In any case, in considering the FIPA with China, I am not as sanguine as minister Fast or the prime minister about the economic opportunities afforded every region of this country. Nor am I particular pleased with the notion that the agreement essentially grants China's state-owned-and-controlled companies the same protection under the law as private Canadian companies and citizens.
In effect, this will give China increased control over some of our natural resources. At what point will we simply become a bread basket?
We are already losing our manufacturing capacity to other, cheaper labour markets - China included.
How are we to become more than just hewers of wood and drawers of water? It is a strange reversal of fortunes that we are witnessing.
The West has ruled for the past 250 years but the might of the Asian empires is reasserting itself.
There is a fascinating book, called Why the West Rules - For Now by Ian Morris that examines that past 12,000 years of history. His argument is that power and progress has moved back and forth between the East and the West, and that power is shifting back to the East right now.
If true, maybe protecting Canadian business interests in China is a smart move. But allowing foreign interests unfettered access to the Canadian economy is a dangerous game. It is one in which we, the Canadian people, are not likely to come out ahead.
