Editor:
The Canada China Foreign Investment and Protection Agreement (FIPA) was negotiated in secrecy and signed by Stephen Harper and the Chinese leadership at the APEC Summit in Vladivostok, Russia. It was tabled in Parliament weeks later on Sept. 26. Without any substantive parliamentary examination of the pros and cons, it can now be signed into law and be binding on Canada for 31 years, on Harper's say so alone.
In slavishly promoting his Conservative Party's line that the Canada China FIPA is a "first for China" John Weston speaks an unintended truth (Coast Reporter, Nov. 2).
The FIPA is a first for China. It is the first time China has secured sweeping access to a foreign market - Canada's - to buy and control Canadian corporations without giving up significant access to China's markets.
With all international Chinese corporations having ties to China's ruling Central Committee, the agreement also represents a first in giving a totalitarian regime virtually unbridled access to Canada's vast storehouse of natural resources. One need not be a conspiracy theorist to conclude that the Central Committee will coordinate this exceptional access, first and foremost, to China's benefit rather than Canada's. China needs natural resources to produce products, not products that it wants to produce.
Weston claims the agreement sets new standards for "transparency" yet fails to explain Harper's included provision allowing the federal government to withhold from public disclosure documents relating to potential Chinese lawsuits against Canada.
Weston cites his 10 years as an immigration lawyer in Taiwan as credentials competent to assess the agreement's benefits: wishing it had been in place "when clients of mine were reliant on the Chinese judicial system."
Really, John? How many of your Taiwanese clients seeking immigration to Canada might have benefitted from an investment agreement between China and Canada?
Jef Keighley
Halfmoon Bay
