- Reaction score
- 5,975
- Points
- 1,260
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s National Post, is an interest take:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/09/14/terence-corcoran-warm-fuzzy-dictatorship.aspx
Absolutely spot on; Canadians are blinkered by their own, juvenile, knee-jerk anti-Americanism.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/09/14/terence-corcoran-warm-fuzzy-dictatorship.aspx
Terence Corcoran: Warm, fuzzy dictatorship
Canada would never accept a U.S. government resource takeover
September 14, 2009
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with U.S. President Barack Obama tomorrow in Washington, they will not be discussing the following hypothetical news story:
WASHINGTON — The U.S. National Energy Corp., recently created by the Obama administration to secure America’s long-term energy security, will today announce a takeover bid for all the shares of Suncor Energy of Calgary. The bid price, expected to approach $50 a share, would value Suncor — Canada’s largest energy company — at about $50-billion, or more than $15-billion over current market value. While company and government officials decline to comment, USNEC’s chief executive, Tex Ritter, said last week that “our objective is to make sure the United States doesn’t get caught with its pants down as the world runs out of oil. All that oil up there in Canada, in the oil sands, would sure help us meet our objective.”
There is little doubt that any such U.S. government move on Canadian energy resources would be greeted with firm opposition, howls of indignation and national protest, even hysteria. Anti-American nationalism runs deep in Canada. The presence of private-enterprise oil giants such as Exxon and Chevron already arouses resentments and suspicion, even though their purpose is to make a profit (for themselves and Canadian owners) rather than serve U.S. government policy. Imagine the reaction, then, to U.S. government direct investment in parts of Canada’s energy sector. Stop the foreign takeover of our vital national resources! Alert David Crane and Maude Barlow! Save our energy supply from nationalization by the U.S. government!
But now along comes China, whose national corporations are scooping up Canadian energy and mining companies with hardly a whiff of opposition. When China’s national oil company, PetroChina, paid $1.9-billion for a share in control of two Alberta oil sands projects controlled by Athabasca Oil Sands, the reaction was generally enthusiastic. A few years ago, when China Minmetals looked at taking over Noranda, Canadians balked and China withdrew. But now China is being welcomed with open arms, even though its explicit objective is to buy up resources to secure a long-term supply for its national economic interests.
Not only is China being welcomed with open arms. Canadian political and corporate interests see China as a strategic economic alternative to the United States. This raises the question: Why would Canada, which would forcefully block any U.S. government moves to take over Canadian assets, find it acceptable to encourage the same moves by China?
One reason is that China is the hot new brand name on the global scene, a cash-rich machine that has every corporate dog salivating and every columnist abandoning principle to get in on the bandwagon. Thomas Friedman, writing in The New York Times, recently approved of China as a “one-party autocracy” that is “ led by a reasonably enlightened group of people.” If only America could be run along the same lines, with politicians taking firmer control of prices and other trivialities of a market economy.
Also trumpeting China as a fresh paradigm of economic success is Martin Wolf. Writing in the yesterday, Mr. Wolf glowingly described China as a near-miracle economy that has recovered astonishingly from the 2008 financial crisis and is now set on a sustainable path to prosperity with little risk of inflation or failure. China is one of “the new champions” of economic development, while the bumbling United States has stumbled.
China is therefore now emerging as the replacement model for the old worn-out market-based economies. From the ideals of freedom and democracy the world policy establishment, including Canada has moved on and is now trumpeting the benefits of warm and fuzzy dictatorship.
Dictatorships are not inherently warm and fuzzy in practice, however, as Carlton University’s Fen Osler Hampson reviews in his commentary elsewhere on this page. The ancient mercantilist objectives of Chinese economic policy are wrong-headed and dangerous in themselves. The Chinese version is an even more problematic form of national corporatism, in which government controls the private sector to achieve ends established by the government.
Canada’s enthusiasm for Chinese partnership stops short of endorsing the Chinese economic model. But it is unlikely to be possible to get into bed with the model without eventually have to play by the model’s rules, which are not market-based and are not grounded in principles of freedom and property rights.
Why would Canada choose to welcome China’s direct government investment, even though China’s political and economic system is grounded in a totalitarianism? One reason is that being pro-China fits perfectly with the entrenched anti-Americanism that still thrives across Canada and that has long animated Canadian economic policy. To be so keenly pro-China makes one, almost by definition, anti-American. Perfect.
Absolutely spot on; Canadians are blinkered by their own, juvenile, knee-jerk anti-Americanism.