Why is Canada giving aid to China? -- $65.4-MILLION in 2004
Canadians have given $65.4 million to China, a country that is spending billions on its space program and its 3 million-man military. On top of this, we have a country that is poised to overtake America as the dominant economic power. The cheaper electronic goods we used to buy from South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan will all come from China soon--or are now. According to Lou Dobbs of CNN, over 90% of the products Wal-Mart now sells are made in China. Now that the WTO has dropped tariffs on textiles and apparel goods, we can expect China to dominate these markets as well. When there are millions of people who will work for a tenth of what they would be paid in the West, the result is a virtual monopoly on labour intensive products. Nor are the Chinese loath to employ their huge prison populations in manufacturing, all for their daily gruel.
And we taxpayers (as usual) have no idea whether it reaches the rural poor, or goes straight into some commissar's desire for yet more prisons. Bruce Garvey, a columnist for the National Post has posited the belief that it goes toward making sure that Bombardier and SNC-Lavalin get some Chinese contracts. In short, a cunning way of disguising more Quebec corporate welfare--with a nice team Canada trip tacked on. (National Post, Jan. 13, 05, "What is our aid to China buying?") Also let us not forget how cozy with China our Chretien and his powerful extended family have become. The entire Chinese aid business has scandal written all over it; however Joe Canadian, distracted by the missing hockey sweater story, will never hear about it. Or if he does, he is likely to throw up his hands and say,
Of course the big government and political interests are diddling us again. What else is new? Besides, what can I do about it?
As much as the politicians say they rue that type of cynical comment, it is what allows them to continue their dishonourable practices with impunity. As a classic example of where Paul Martin is coming from, you should know that Martin's Bahamas-registered ship, the Sheila Anne, is having its keel work done in Shanghai. It is not enough that our Prime Minister has fired his Canadian crews, avoided paying his hundreds of millions in taxes, but now he can't even give the depressed Saint John shipyards some business.
I have added an update below. Scroll down for "Native Land Claims -- "New land-claim and self-government accord worth $350-million to Inuit in Labrador" NJC
Prime minister courting Chinese -- "As well as business, he promised to "vigorously promote ... core Canadian values in areas such as the environment and human rights. . . . . Do China's policies in Tibet constitute "terrorism?"
[. . . . ] This week he's off again on another glamourous adventure -- this time to China, Thailand, Sri Lanka -- quite a change from Chile, Brazil, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Libya and Morocco, where he spent Christmas.
[. . . . ] The main goal of this trip is business -- and a bit of politicking.
Ostensibly, he's heading a "Team Canada" group to drum up business in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, but since the tsunami tragedy has been such a political godsend (so to speak), he's first going to Sri Lanka and Thailand (but not Indonesia). [. . . . ]
China is the main event.
At a gala Canada-China Business Council dinner in Toronto in December, Martin stressed our growing "partnership" with China in various business deals.
Ban to remain on B.C. offshore energy exploration -- until election is over -- fear of vote losses
OTTAWA - The federal and B.C. Liberal governments, both fearing vote losses in urban ridings, have agreed to place on the backburner the divisive issue of whether energy exploration and production be permitted off the West Coast.
A federal official confirmed yesterday Ottawa, which in 2002 took steps to lift the moratorium within 12 to 18 months, currently has no plans to remove the 33-year-old ban.
[. . . . ] He confirmed there will be no major steps taken before the B.C. election and it may not be until 2010 before advance exploration work, such as seismic testing, begins in the Queen Charlotte Basin.
The Liberals campaigned on the issue in 2001 and two years later a provincial government throne speech declared there would be an offshore industry "up and running, environmentally sound and booming with job creation" in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics in British Columbia. [. . . . ]
Have native land claims been settled in that area?
Korea reigns in shipbuilding, for now -- Country looks warily as China, a growing rival, closes the gap
ULSAN, South Korea. . . the world's largest shipyard is so efficient that a new $80 million vessel slips into the water every four working days.
Inside the design shops of Hyundai Heavy Industries, naval engineers draw up computer models for a supervessel that could carry 10,000 steel containers, the freight equivalent of 30 million pairs of sneakers or 100 million Barbie dolls.
It was only in 2004 that South Korea definitively wrested from Japan the title of world's largest shipbuilding nation. But South Korea is already looking over its shoulder at China, which has embarked on a path toward becoming the world's largest shipbuilder by 2015.
[. . . . ] South Koreans know well that 1,000 kilometers, or 650 miles, from here, a similarly barren shoreline south of Shanghai is undergoing a $4 billion transformation that is aimed at making China State Shipbuilding the world's largest ship maker. [. . . . ]
[. . . . ] But this winter, workers near Shanghai are building something new: China's first domestically made liquefied natural gas tanker. In a contract signed last August, Hudong-Zhongua Shipbuilding is to build five LNG tankers. [. . . . ]
There is much more; search "Chinese yards", "Daewoo Shipbuilding", "Samsung", "steel plate", "dome-shaped carriers", "LNG".
Not elk, but oil: China's Canadian hunt -- China's thirst for oil has brought it to the doorstep of the United States.
Unobtrusively positioned, in this morning's National Post, I read that Minister of Indian Affairs, Andy Scott is ready to sign a new agreement with Labrador's Inuit for a large swath of Canada -- just in time for the "big boys", I suppose, to get ready to wrest the best out of the potential riches of the North. A few natives will be enriched--the usual suspects. Remember the native negotiator who came to Ottawa "against" but left happy? Find out what he got--and what the rest will get. Has this been debated in Parliament?
Canadians voted for this and more like it. Read the details--once the deals have been securely been put in place and the "right" people know where they're going and what they're going to be able to get -- whose palms to grease. Yes, I'm cynical.
Chinese energy companies are on the verge of striking ambitious deals in Canada in efforts to win access to some of the most prized oil reserves in North America. The deals may create unease for the first time since the 1970s in the normally smooth energy relationship between the United States and Canada.
[. . . . ] new ports. . . tanker to China.
Chinese companies. . . direct investments in the oil sands, by buying into existing producers or acquiring companies with leases to produce oil in the region.
. . . nearly half a dozen . . . $2 billion and potentially worth much more. . . .agreement could be signed in early January.
[. . . . ] Ian La Couvée, a spokesman for Enbridge, Canada's second-largest pipeline company, said it was in talks to offer a Chinese company a 49 percent stake in a 1,160-kilometer, or 720-mile, pipeline planned between northern Alberta and the coast of British Columbia.
The pipeline project, which is expected to cost at least $2 billion, would send as much as 80 percent of its capacity of 400,000 barrels a day to China, with the remainder going to California refineries. Sinopec, one of China's largest oil companies, was said by executives briefed on the talks to be the likeliest Chinese company in the project.
A rival Canadian pipeline company, Terasen, meanwhile, has held its own talks with Sinopec and China National Petroleum about joining forces to increase the capacity of an existing pipeline to Vancouver. Richard Ballantyne, president of Terasen, said it had supplied almost a dozen tankers this year to help Chinese refineries determine their ability to process the Alberta crude oil blends.
[. . . . ] Separately, Marcel Coutu, the chief executive of Canadian Oil Sands Trust, a company that controls one of the largest oil-sands ventures in the tundralike region around Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, said he had recently met with officials from PetroChina, one of China's several state-controlled energy concerns, and had agreed to send it trial shipments of oil.
I thought Prime Minister Martin seemed inordinately desperate to become PM of Canada--his bafflegab, on the hustings and since, has been designed to get whatever he wants, not to enlighten. It seemed he would promise anything as long as he could govern. Where does he fit into all this?
Martin has no CSL shipping company any more--sold to his sons--so we know he has nothing more to do with it. Has he had to divest himself of his
offshore shipping companies? Does he still have a large interest in one in Southeast Asia? China or Hong Kong? The name has slipped my mind. Probably no connection.
Does he have anything to do with oil, LNG, pipeline, tar sands, Arctic exploration, new ports, supertankers which will haul LNG and oil or any of the rest of the businesses and offshoots?
He just has seemed so desperate to get going on deals with China that one begins to wonder.
Native Land Claims -- "New land-claim and self-government accord worth $350-million to Inuit in Labrador"
Is there any connection between the above and Paul Martin, Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott and Environment Minister Stephane Dion's dealings with the Inuit?
The Minister's unseemsly haste in inking deals with the natives in Canada's North raises a few questions. Who benefits? How much it would cost to get one chief or negotiator onside and then to get on with whatever . . . .
The latest news? "New land-claim and self-government accord worth $350-million to Inuit in Labrador" National Post, Jan. 13, 05, A8 -- 5,300 natives stand to get $350-millon. Did the rest of Canada have anything to say. There are more aspects than money. Check. See Update below, as well.
Bypassing Parliament, this government is relieving Canadians of great swathes of Canada -- hived off to fulfil land claims based on "promises" someone appears to have made to a few natives 75 to a hundred years ago, people who lived by hunting, fishing and roaming, but not governing the territory in any real sense. Add in "oral history" from people who are deficient in reading and writing skills for a modern world (There are exceptions -- but too few.) -- and Canada's government hands over unprecedented rights--resource rights, among other things--to this enormous territory. The whole thing smells!
In several cases of native governance, there have been instances of--evidence of--too little transparency and too much lack of economic sophistication. Check today's National Post (A8) for another investigation -- "RCMP investigation into missing funds belonging to an Alberta First Nations school board".
What will happen when the "big boys" need to negotiate big resource extraction, crossing over native lands, pipeline or shipping deals? I suppose unseemly haste in getting land claims signed is what is needed -- for those who stand to make money.
Update: Just to give another example of the corruption on the native reserves -- that could be harnessed by astute businessmen, there is this case of malfeasance. There were the convictions of two band officers from Big Cove Reserve who skimmed off $2-million from their reserve -- but they were given a conditional discharge by a New Brunswick judge. Did they have to make restitution? Yes, I jest.
Not only do the natives get to rip off Canadian taxpayers, but they rip off their own band members--if they are on the right side of band governance.
Rather like the government of Canada's rip-off in the Sponsorship / Adscam / Slush Fund scandal, isn't it?
Yet, Paul Martin Jr. and the rest get to sit at the $22,000 a plate table with the Chinese movers and groovers. Do you think there are any concerned native chiefs along?
News Junkie Canada
Why has Canada's Parliament had no chance for input into this deal?
CALGARY - Proponents of the Alaska Highway Pipeline Project are stepping up pressure on Ottawa to strip Calgary-based pipeline builder, TransCanada Corp., of its claimed right to construct the bulk of the US$20-billion natural gas line.
[. . . . ] BP Canada spearheads the Canadian lobbying effort for Alaska gas producers planning the massive project: BP PLC, ExxonMobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips Co.
Working together with a second pipe builder, Enbridge Inc., BP is trying to convince Ottawa to lay out a new regulatory process for assessing the portion of the line (two-thirds of the total) that would pass through Canada.
[. . . . ] An act of Parliament, dating back to the 1970s, gives TransCanada the right to build the Canadian portion of the proposed gas line, and already lays out a regulatory process to follow.
"If Ottawa were to set out a new regulatory process, it would basically be saying, 'We aren't going to recognize TransCanada's rights as they exist under the [Northern Pipeline Act],' " said another source close to matter. [. . . . ]
Who would benefit from that?
Other articles in the same post -- related or of interest:
* Sinopec in Talks to Buy Controlling Husky Stake
* China bids for Canadian oil giant from tycoon Li Ka-Shing
Options exhausted, oil firms turn to tar -- Prices fuel boom in Western Canada
[. . . . ] In the rest of the world, most of the best places to drill for new oil are off limits to the Western energy industry for political reasons, and existing fields are already pumping every barrel they can.
So, with roaring global demand driving energy prices up to record levels and fresh supplies of crude oil hard to find, Suncor and more than a dozen other energy companies, including Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco and Royal Dutch/Shell, are pursuing projects here in Fort McMurray, a city of 50,000 where the temperature can dip to 40 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, or minus 40 degrees Celsius, in the winter.
[. . . . ] The flow of oil extracted from Alberta's tar sands, also called oil sands, surpassed one million barrels a day at the end of 2003, and it is
expected to double to two million barrels by 2010, matching the output of significant members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries like Libya and Indonesia.
The frenzy of tar-sands development in Alberta highlights an uncomfortable fact about the search for unconventional sources of oil to replace dwindling conventional supplies. It depends on petroleum prices staying high for decades to come.
[. . . . ] It often costs as much as $15 a barrel to get bitumen, a thick, sticky form of crude oil, out of the sands, compared with recovery costs as low as $2 a barrel for crude oil in parts of the Middle East. Refining the bitumen also costs much more than refining light crude.
[. . . . ] The attractiveness for a country like the U.S. is that we're right next door, politically stable and friendly to private enterprise," said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary investment firm. "The downside is that it's costly to produce, and open to criticism from environmentalists, who view the oil sands as a great polluter."
US: Outsourcing study a welcome surprise in budget bill
There won't be any studies in Canada -- until the government needs a royal commission to stall things if they begin to feel the heat.
(CNN) -- Congressional authority to peek into citizens' tax returns wasn't the only clause hidden in the omnibus spending bill that recently passed. There's also a more welcome surprise for the American worker: a grant for a comprehensive study of the effects of outsourcing U.S. jobs to cheap, foreign labor markets.
So far, the government has simply lacked the data to determine offshore outsourcing's impact on the U.S. work force, said Republican Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia. Wolf initiated the measure to grant $2 million to the independent, nonpartisan National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) for the study.
The new study will provide a breakdown of how many jobs have gone abroad and from which industries. That analysis could have huge implications for future job creation, wage growth and the plight of the middle class.
"We're also looking to see what the implications are for our educational system," Wolf said. He noted that students might choose to avoid studying engineering and computer science for fear of not finding jobs when they graduate. [. . . . ]
