Selling Out to State Owned Companies

[mustardman]

2 Years after the Potash debacle(WHEN CLEAR RULES WERE SUPPOSED TO BE LAID OUT) Mr. Harper has decided to let CNOOC and Petronas to Own Big chunks of OUR OIL INDUSTRY. WTF

[SASKFARMER3]

Mustard for once were on the same page not sure
where this will take us as a country!

[furrowtickler]

Agreed, this one makes me uneasy.

[Fransisco]

http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/022161.html#comments

Nexen-CNOOC deal approved… que Left-wing sheep rants with no understanding of economics, the company, or the terms.
The Rant: China is taking over our resources.
The Reality: The Alberta government owns all the producing and non-producing leases that Nexen has. Nexen has maybe 1.5 billion barrels of oil equivalents, and the oil sands alone contain over 1500 billion barrels. 90 percent of Nexen's Q3 cash flow came from outside of Canada, so it's only 10 percent "Canadian" resources anyway… Not a huge deal. Anyone in the Financial markets or the Oil and Gas industry knows this is the right decision and will result in increased productivity and job production in Canada. This small stake is not a threat to national security.

The Rant: China is going to take all the jobs and move them to China.
The Reality: Not allowed under the restrictions. More jobs created in Canada due to increased Capital injections.

The Rant: The NDP or Liberals would never do this.
The Reality: No previous Governments have ever blocked a foreign takeover. The Conservatives were the first with the blocking of the Potash deal.

There is a huge amount of ignorance and uneducated opinions on this topic, which is why there is a backlash from lefty loonies. Canadians who understand the full terms and the free market economy should be happy.

The US had a monopoly on our oil and were paying $25.00 per barrel less than world prices. That will end. Maybe the yanks should have thought thru using the Keystone pipeline as a political tool to appeal to the President's anti free market base.

Elections have consequences. Canada has no intention of following the now marxist USA into the dumper. When you shit on your friends, don't be surprised when they find new friends.

[Burbert]

Wowsers, Fresno you is one smart as red
neck framer. Wes lucky ta have ya ta set
things straight. Wit all the good news
that ya posted, us Comedians can now sit
back on our kesters and enjoy the view,
hordes and hordes a yellow faces crawlin
all over Comedia, just mean wes gonna get
richer, and richer and richer. Heil
Harper!

[wilagro]

Fransisco: Reality: Harper is a friggin idiot and a !@#$% Quisling ready and willing to sell-out to the highest bidder.

Whenever Harper has a news conference he has that damned water bottle handy and is always swigging away. Its like a crutch that he uses whenever he makes an unpopular announcement or is about to tell a whole raft of LIES or EXCUSES for what he is about to do.

"Future restrictions and exceptional circumstances"...what kind of b.s. is that all about?...he could have stopped these deals but didn't...never mind the future crap.

I wish we were close to election day...this Harper clown would go down same as Mulroney did after he pulled the wool over our collective eyes.

[agstar77]

The other shoe is about to drop as marketing boards are on the table in free trade talks. Yeah, you got what you voted for. Free ride for dairy and egg farmers is over.

[wilagro]

Yes, Harper will really be sucking water when he announces the end of the marketing boards. It'll also be the end of the love affair with the farm voters...especially in Ontario and Quebec...(and more than a few in western Canada).

[rockpile]

Just to be fair China is not the only Govt owned
enterprise with investments in the tarsands.
Norway, Britain, South Korea, Japan and the
Emirates to name a few. Why is everyone upset? The
Alberta Govt has been sending missions to China to
get interest and investment for years and years.
And Harpster has been pushing hard since 2010. So
how could anyone say 'no' when the Government's
hopes and dreams came true? I don't think the
Chinese are in it for anything but the money - same
as everyone else. And they happen to have the
capital when no one else seems too. And Fresno is
right - Nexen isn't that big a player and they were
up for sale. Maybe this will excite China to purchase
more of their nutritional needs from us because in
their eyes we are fair and honourable traders. Time
will tell.

[rhoff]

The petronas takeover was 6billion. The LNG
terminal will be about 10 billion to build. I call that
a net benefit.

[tubs]

maybe not perfect but capitalism is still the best system.

[Fransisco]

Harper Derangement Syndrome


http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/08/rex-murphy-vilifying-stephen-harper/

Rex Murphy: Vilifying Stephen Harper

There’s something about Stephen. His opponents have many names for him — the majority of which are, alas, neither flattering nor meant to be.

He is a taciturn schemer, a theocrat mole, loose at the top of the Canadian political system, determined to bend Canada to his grim and twisted design, to curb the liberties of Canadians, to push us and our country back into some fevered neocon darkness. Politically, he is Dick Cheney’s illegitimate son. George W. Bush’s half-brother. He’s a lackey of the rich, and enemy of all that is good and Canadian. He’s in the pocket of big oil. He hates baby seals.

My, how the spine chills when some people talk and write about Harper.

Then there are the many “faces” his enemies attribute to him, among them Conspiracy Harper, Vendetta Harper, Christianist-Harper — hope of the hard line, Doomsday-waiting Evangelicals, Secret-Agenda Harper, Tool of Israel Harper, Anti-Democracy Harper, with perhaps a little space for Secret Alberta-Separatist Harper. The caricatures belong more to the old style of detective novel when the villains, projections of untethered fantasy, were eerie amalgams of malice, supernal powers, outlandish ambitions and utterly unbelievable. Harper as Fu Manchu, as it were.

Hating, mistrusting or dismissing Harper is not a transient phenomenon. A poll as recent as this week, seven years after Mr. Harper took office (during which he has not, contra naturum, transformed Canada into a gulag or prison house for the poor, artists, liberals, greens or whomever he sees as his opponents) reveals a majority of Canadians think he still has that famous but, by definition, unseen hidden agenda. Even though he is Prime Minister and has a majority, many still believe he keeps that damn agenda up his sleeve. Query: What’s the point of a hidden agenda that stays hidden? Will it still be hidden when he leaves office? If so, what was or is its point?

I do admit that the poll surprised me. A full 75% of sentient voters from the big parties thought him (I’m paraphrasing) untrustworthy. The fervour to believe ill of the Prime Minister is, however, even stronger amongst the naturists, the Earth-worshipping Greens. A whopping 97 % of them do not trust him, and believe that the “hidden agenda” — perhaps like the lost city of Atlantis, or fabled Shangri-La is “real.” Greens are fundamentalist anti-Harperites. That 97% represents not a trend; it’s a fixation.

It’s not just the “hidden-agenda” cliché, though. It’s the man himself. Go on comment boards, Twitter, read the pundits, listen to conversations on the street and you’ll soon see that the pure bile directed at Mr. Harper, the contempt for the man himself, is shocking and remarkable. They mock his build, his clothes, his relationship with his children (the handshake off to school) his hair, his — well, his very being. How wonderful it is that so many believe they are infinitely his superior — after all, they have the best tables at Twitter Café, and he’s only the prime minister.

In sum, the tenure and even the physical presence of Stephen Harper, for very many otherwise temperate people, is remarkable for the virulence of the opposition and personal antipathy he inspires. It’s not just the politics or the policies. It’s him — the person.

It is not abnormal for politicians to be disliked. Nixon was disliked, and his personality — pinched, reclusive, sullen and curiously self-pitying — fed that dislike. Pierre Trudeau, worshipped by some, conjured savage opposition and distaste from his opponents, but Trudeau the man sometimes earned kudos even for those who despised his policies. Brian Mulroney had the strange knack of inspiring those who didn’t know him to really dislike him, and those who did know him — despite his political errors and that unfortunate bag of cash — to see him as even warm, loyal and charming.

With Stephen Harper the emotions he elicits — especially the extreme ones of contempt and near-hatred, have to be a projection of his enemies, far more than an assessment of Harper’s character or policies.

For, step back a little, make a little space, and you will see that in his personal and domestic conduct, Harper is almost stereotypically Canadian. He’s a mild, unobnoxious, hockey-mad fellow. He doesn’t boast.He shuns the spotlight he could be commanding every day. He keeps his privacy and doesn’t insist, like many public figures, in conducting a soap opera around his position or his family. He’d be the ideal neighbour — he wouldn’t just drop in, too reserved for that (which is great), but I’m sure he’d lend a shovel when needed. Probably even help dig out your car if you were stuck, and take your thanks with a self-conscious smile and reassurance that it was no trouble.

So why is it that people are not content just to disagree with him, to label him simply wrong or misguided but must revile him? Why is there such fervour of suspicion about “the agenda” and so much invective and worse directed at him? I don’t know.

I do know the response is unbalanced and disproportionate, and hurts his enemies more than him.

They make Mr. Harper, in their own white-hot minds, bigger and more scary than he is or could be.

[wilagro]

Francisco: Trust you to post an opinion piece that should be titled "An Ode To A Prime Minister". Rex "Mush-Mouth Murphy" is being his usual self...being contentious is his "thing".

Despite what Rex writes, a good many people are very concerned about what our P.M. is doing and they don't like the direction that he has chosen for Canada domestically and in relationships with other nations.

Yes, we can make fun of his custom-made wigs (most likely made in China) and criticize his amateurish attempts at statesmanship but in the end those are minor compared to the long-term and for the most part SECRET pacts (some lasting for thirty-one years) made with so-called trading partners in Asia. Canadians DON'T LIKE these deals where the dispute settlement processes are totally SECRET. In other words we don't like SNEAKY POLITICIANS.

[ASRG]

Look the fact is Nexen has a gong show going on in the oilsands? Check it out a bit.....really poor technology?
The only suckers who bit were the Chinese....if it was any good everu oil company in the world would be lining up!

Same with the Malaysia gas deal...who in their right mind wants to be in NG right now?

Stephen Harper isn't my favorite politician, but having said that, I think he is doing a "fairly" good job considering what he has to work with?

He has done some good stuff by reducing some of the more blatant parasites out of government(not nearly enough!) and keeping a bit of a lid on the spendthrift/tax stuff?

God help us if we get Muclair or Trudeau in charge of the credit card!

[phoenix64]

remember people! this isin't selling out, this is making peace, they have tons of capital to develope ours and other countries resources, they desperately need food and energy to keep their ball rollin. If harper, obama and the rest of the developed world does not make nice and allow them a piece of the pie they will simply come and get the hard way, no matter to them.