> So, yes, I think that foreign ownership carries with it costs.while it > brings some benefits.
You don't say how you regard the balance or trade-offs between the two. =============== I would have voted for more control over foreign investments and allowed those that actually provided a net benefit for Canada. I did a report for the Science Council years ago on this. I interviewed the CEO of the Canadian operation and interviewed the person to whom they reported abroad. Same for head of production, marketing and R and D. Did this wherever it was possible to do so. Results were interesting and astonishing. In many cases the Canadian branch plant president with large office, large staff etc., reported to a very junior person at head office. One case in point. The pres of a Canadian pharmaceutical company reported to someone in NY who was responsible for Canada and South America. Imagine my surprise when this junior person with a small office, maybe a cubicle was the person overseeing the Can operation. The R and D was even more interesting. I found that a Can plant with R and D operations next door didn't even speak to each other. The head of R and D only reported to the operations abroad. The lab had a global mandate to do a certain thing but it was part of a global MNC. While it was in Canada for grants and other reasons it could have been abroad. Employed Canadians, yes but very little else to do with Canada. I could go on and on. Subtle losses with foreign ownership. Often hard to measure but there nonetheless. The game was over when Mulroney said "Canada is open for business". FTA and NAFTA also helped to seal things. Lots to talk about. Arthur -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 1:06 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: The English want it, too! Arthur wrote: > Remember the Gray report? Herb Gray's report that led to the > establishment of FIRA.(foreign investment review agency) > > I did most of the R and D material for that report. Cool. > So, yes, I think that foreign ownership carries with it costs.while > it brings some benefits. You don't say how you regard the balance or trade-offs between the two. Jim Stanford, in the Globe & Mail: + More than half of Canada's incoming foreign investment is in the mining, oil and gas, and primary metals industries (such as nickel, aluminum and steel). And foreign hunger in those sectors explains most of the recent surge in foreign control in Canada. In this regard, incoming foreign investment is only reinforcing Canada's status as a resource supplier. That's much different from European countries, where incoming foreign investment is concentrated in high-tech, value-added industries. + Canadian companies, of course, also invest abroad in their own foreign subsidiaries. Since 1997, the book value of Canadian corporate investments abroad has exceeded the book value of foreign direct investment in Canada. That net balance has eroded somewhat in recent years (due to mega-takeovers of Alcan, Stelco, Inco and others), but Canada is still slightly in the black. Some commentators (such as the University of Calgary's Jack Mintz) thus conclude that Canada has nothing to fear from foreign investment, since we're getting as much action abroad as we are giving up at home. + But the foreign investment that leaves Canada looks very different from the foreign investment that enters. Most Canadian-owned foreign direct investment abroad is in the financial sector. And 80 per cent of the new foreign investment that's headed out in the past five years is in banking and finance. + In other words, the overall apparent balance in Canadian foreign investment relationships hides some important structural imbalances. Canada has been ceding ownership over resource industries, offset in the statistics by the increasing global reach of our big banks. + Without those banks, Canada's foreign investment position would be much bleaker. If we consider only the non-financial portion of the economy (that is, the economy that produces real goods and services, rather than trading in paper assets), Canada's net foreign investment position is worse (minus 10 per cent of GDP) than at any time since the 1970s -- when the Trudeau government first created the Foreign Investment Review Agency. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/a-deliberate-strategic- approach-to-foreign-investment/article1795590/print/ So foreign entities with no reason to hold a high priority for Canada's interests (or those of a Canadian region) own heaps of nickel, aluminum, oil and coal (if not potash), while we own various financial instruments or foreign entities that, in turn, own financial instruments. Financial instruments are consentual abstractions, fictions, whose fictional nature can emerge suddenly and massively subsequent to a tiny crack in the requisite consentuality. Nickel, oil and potash are real and tangible. - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
