Harper’s bad bet on China
Gus Van Harten
Thursday night’s election debate took place against the backdrop of the hard-hit resource sector.
With its focus on the economy, the debate pointed to the Harper
government’s big – and thus far spectacularly bad – bet on China.
In 2014, the government gave China a long-term investment deal,
called the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection
Agreement (FIPA), that is clearly lopsided in favour of China.
In exchange, the government appears to have sought positive signals that China would buy and invest in Canadian resources.
Since the bet was made, resource prices have plummeted and the
Chinese economy is in crisis. Chinese demand for Canadian resources has
declined, not grown. The bet seems unlikely to pay off for a long time,
if ever.
Meanwhile, Canada has been locked into a lopsided FIPA for a
remarkably lengthy and anti-democratic term of 15 years. After that term
is up, Canada would have to give one year’s notice to get out of the
deal and then wait another 15 years for the FIPA’s survival clause to
run out.
In other words, the Harper government’s commitments to China were
written in the legal equivalent of cement while China’s promises to
Canada were written in sand, just before the tide came in.
