China Getting Ready to Buy Canada

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tay

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May 20, 2012
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The pending acquisition of Aecon by the Chinese firm CCCC International Holding Ltd. (CCCI) has triggered a nationwide debate in Canada.

Aecon is a jewel among Canadian construction and engineering firms. CCCI, on the other hand, is an investment arm of the notorious China Communication Construction Co. (CCCC) – a state-owned enterprise (SOE) that built the artificial islands in the South China Sea and is on the radar screen of the U.S. Senate.

CCCC has also engaged in fraudulent business practices across multiple countries. Indeed, it was debarred in 2009 from any World Bank project for eight years.

The debate around the pending CCCI-Aecon deal has centred on the net benefit to Canada and its impact on our national security. China’s ambassador to Canada calls it “a common commercial transaction” Yet a closer look at this deal shows that it is not a win-win deal for Canada.

Canadians need to ensure that any foreign acquisition of our domestic businesses is a beneficial one. Foreign acquirers must uphold three basic principles for free trade: property and contract rights, competitive neutrality, and reciprocity. Chinese SOEs violate these principles by following Beijing’s anti-free-market principles and practices.

Every acquisition of a reputable western company is a concrete step taken by China to grow its global SOE empire. It’s worth noting that Aecon has a solid track record of Western technology and management advancements. Its competitive edge and business reputation would be used to help conceal and obscure the infamous history of CCCI’s parent company

Canadians need to ask what are the potential consequences of any acquisition by Chinese SOEs? Allowing Chinese SOEs “unfettered” entry into our country would itself be helping the growth of the China model, featuring one-party rule, SOE dominance, and an eclectic approach to free markets.

more

CHEN: China’s Aecon purchase not a win-win for Canada | Toronto Sun

Duanjie Chen is an independent scholar. This piece is part of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Dragon at the Door series of articles. The author would like to thank RWR Advisory Group for providing information on CCCC and CCC.
 
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OpposingDigit

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Everything in Canada is owned by the U.S, ..... so China may buy Canada, but the cheques will be cashed in America,
 
petros

petros

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tay said:
The pending acquisition of Aecon by the Chinese firm CCCC International Holding Ltd. (CCCI) has triggered a nationwide debate in Canada.

Aecon is a jewel among Canadian construction and engineering firms. CCCI, on the other hand, is an investment arm of the notorious China Communication Construction Co. (CCCC) – a state-owned enterprise (SOE) that built the artificial islands in the South China Sea and is on the radar screen of the U.S. Senate.

CCCC has also engaged in fraudulent business practices across multiple countries. Indeed, it was debarred in 2009 from any World Bank project for eight years.

The debate around the pending CCCI-Aecon deal has centred on the net benefit to Canada and its impact on our national security. China’s ambassador to Canada calls it “a common commercial transaction” Yet a closer look at this deal shows that it is not a win-win deal for Canada.

Canadians need to ensure that any foreign acquisition of our domestic businesses is a beneficial one. Foreign acquirers must uphold three basic principles for free trade: property and contract rights, competitive neutrality, and reciprocity. Chinese SOEs violate these principles by following Beijing’s anti-free-market principles and practices.

Every acquisition of a reputable western company is a concrete step taken by China to grow its global SOE empire. It’s worth noting that Aecon has a solid track record of Western technology and management advancements. Its competitive edge and business reputation would be used to help conceal and obscure the infamous history of CCCI’s parent company

Canadians need to ask what are the potential consequences of any acquisition by Chinese SOEs? Allowing Chinese SOEs “unfettered” entry into our country would itself be helping the growth of the China model, featuring one-party rule, SOE dominance, and an eclectic approach to free markets.

more

CHEN: China’s Aecon purchase not a win-win for Canada | Toronto Sun

Duanjie Chen is an independent scholar. This piece is part of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Dragon at the Door series of articles. The author would like to thank RWR Advisory Group for providing information on CCCC and CCC.
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They could do the same thing they did to Broken Hill when they tried to take over PCS.
 
T

tay

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As Australia continues to reel from lurid revelations about the extent of Beijing’s influence-peddling, espionage and propaganda operations in that country, Conservative Senator Linda Frum says Ottawa should follow Canberra’s example by launching an inquiry into the extent of Beijing’s subterfuge in Canada, and by tightening laws to prevent Beijing from meddling in Canadian political processes.

“This is essential. It’s critical. It’s essential for Canadian political sovereignty that we examine this very, very closely,” Frum told me. “I think we need to look at it and I think we need to look at it urgently.”

It’s highly doubtful that we will, though. But first, a look at what’s been going on down under.

Following investigations into Beijing’s covert operations by Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull launched an inquiry in June that went on to uncover cash-for-access scandals, the covert strong-arming of overseas Chinese students and Australia’s ethnic Chinese communities, and unheeded intelligence-agency warnings about Beijing’s lavish donations to Australian political parties — including Turnbull’s own Liberal Party.
Let us be thankful that his weird infatuations have been unrequited

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Less than two years into a “free trade” agreement with China, Turnbull’s government is facing threats from Beijing that he should be made to “feel the pain” for introducing legislation this week that bans foreign political donations and cracks down on covert attempts to influence Australian politics and society. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been clamouring for a free trade deal with Beijing. Let us be thankful that, at least for now, his weird infatuations have been unrequited.

New Zealand’s worsening predicament was highlighted in October with the disclosure that Chinese-born MP Jian Yang, a member of the select committee for foreign affairs, defence and trade in New Zealand’s ruling National Party, had failed to disclose that he had worked as senior linguistics instructor for Chinese military intelligence before emigrating to New Zealand.
For the purpose of elections, there should not be any foreign funds coming in

Last May, Frum introduced a modest private members bill, S-239, which would ban foreign entities from directly or indirectly inducing Canadian electors to vote for or against any political candidate or political party. The six-month loophole would be eliminated, and registered third parties would face fines and possible jail time for accepting foreign donations.

more

Terry Glavin: As Chinese money corrupts western politics, Trudeau’s Liberals keep cashing in | National Post

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EagleSmack

EagleSmack

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avro25 said:
What?
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T

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
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Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau concluded a visit to China recently, but it failed to launch anticipated negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). This appeared to result in part from his voicing of the Canadian commitment to the rule of law, a clean environment, media freedom, gender equality, and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Canadians who understand China’s economy were much relieved by the turn of events. Jonathan Manthorpe of Vancouver has described Beijing state capitalism as a variation of a Ponzi scheme: “A local government without a functioning system for raising tax revenue and riddled with corruption sells development land to garner cash (first getting rid of farmers living on the land)…the municipality has the power to instruct banks to lend the development company the money for the sale. So the local government gets its cash, the municipally-owned company gets to build a speculative residential or industrial complex, and all seems well.”

In 2008, New Zealand became the first advanced economy to enter into a FTA with China. Currently, Professor Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury in N.Z., a Mandarin speaker and expert on China, is urging her government to draft new laws to protect New Zealanders from “China’s covert, corrupting … coercive political influence activities (which) are now at a critical level…China’s efforts undermine the integrity of our political system, threaten our sovereignty, and directly affect the rights of Chinese New Zealanders to freedom of speech, association, and religion.”

Many governments are troubled by a range of other problems resulting from any FTA signed with Beijing: their absence of rule of law and independent courts; restrictions on foreign enterprises operating within China; job losses and wage decreases for workers at home; lack of intellectual property protection; and above all “crony capitalism/Leninist governance.”

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https://www.theepochtimes.com/trade-china-and-consequences_2390625.html
 
T

tay

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The collapse of privatization behemoth, Carillion, could become the straw that broke the neoliberal camel's back. Carillion has shown that the transfer of risk from the public sector to the private sector is a farce for, when PPP or public-private participation projects fail, the private partner often goes down leaving the risk and loss with the public partner, the government and, through it, the public.

Now it's the Royal Bank of Scotland in the spotlight. RBS made itself a big player in the subprime mortgage fiasco and got caught in the collapse. It's what happened afterward that has critics up in arms.

Up to its neck in sub-prime mortgage lending in the US, it was a major figure in the 2007 financial crash, during which its toxic balance sheet was found to be larger than the GDP of the entire UK.

Then, after RBS had been bailed out with taxpayers' money, it continued to give capitalism a bad rep, ruthlessly exploiting the small businesses who were suffering from the post-crash recession it had helped create. This was confirmed last week in a revealing internal RBS memo from 2009 which urged managers to let struggling small businesses “hang themselves” so that the bank could pick up their assets at rock bottom. The now notorious RBS Global Restructuring Group was condemned in the Commons last week for “the largest theft anywhere”, and for ruining thousands of viable companies.

The current RBS chairman, Sir Howard Davies, says that the Public Finance Initiative was a “fraud on the people” and he should know because Royal Bank was one of the biggest names in PFI in the noughties. A National Audit Office report last week confirmed what readers of the Sunday Herald have long known, that the PFI contracts for building and running schools and hospitals are around 40 per cent more expensive than orthodox public procurement. This means around about £200bn in public funds is being diverted to pay for the houses, cars, private schools and investment portfolios of managers and shareholders of the various PFI schemes.

No-one should be surprised at this. It is how business has learned to behave in the era of what some have called “turbo-capitalism” – the unregulated, low-tax, bandit capitalism of the last 35 years. A succession of scandals – the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, PPI, endowment mortgages, private pensions – has fatally undermined capitalism’s moral claim to be the fairest and most efficient economic system. But the very visibility of these fraudulent activities now constitutes a real and present danger to the future of the capitalist system as we know it.

Take the privatisation mega-corp, Carillion, which was also heavily involved in PFI and has been one of the leading agents in the “outsourcing” of public services. It has now gone bust putting at risk the welfare of some 40,000 dependent businesses and their employees. Effectively an arm of the state, Carillion represented the most blatant form of toxic collusion between Government and the private sector. The managers of Carillion, who paid themselves inflated salaries and bonuses even when the company was effectively bust, were just doing what comes naturally. Money is its own justification. Most have salted away their fortunes, and moved on – but the public, who paid the price, have not.

Some entrepreneurs are arguably wealth creators. For the two centuries following the Industrial Revolution, capitalism was the most innovative and productive economic system in human history, as Karl Marx observed. Even today, capitalists like Elon Musk of Tesla or the late Steve Jobs of Apple, bring great products to market, though in both cases they were heavily underpinned by direct and indirect public investment. But the people manipulating Libor rates in the City, setting up hedge funds, selling sub-prime mortgages, running PFI schemes etc are simply parasites. Britain's managerial class today is about as entrepreneurial as Homer Simpson. They're mostly dull-witted accountants who've sat on their bottoms for 20 years.

In the 19th century, plutocrats could protect their wealth behind laws largely drawn up for the benefit of the wealthy. The poor had no lawyers. But today the poor have the vote, and lawyers, and there is no way this kind of structural inequality can survive in the 21st century, short of the extinction of popular democracy. Eventually, people will vote for change: for a society in which wealth is spread more equitably, and in which public services are run in the interest of the people who pay for them.

And soon it will be Canada's turn. With Morneau at his side, Trudeau plans an enormous, badly needed and overdue infrastructure mega-programme and, just like the Brits, he wants to put it on the "never, never" - public-private participation. It's the perfect alternative to having to tax the rich and dormant, accumulated wealth.

We've seen what happened when the Brits privatized Brit Rail, the Post Office, and all manner of once "public" utilities. We've seen that visionless governments are suckers for predatory privatization and neoliberal fraud. We've seen how prime minister "cash for access" has dealt with KPMG and the Isle of Man scofflaws, the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers scandals. We've heard his message of globalism consigning our kids and theirs to a lifetime of "job churn."

Trudeau is a master of the homespun image but like so much about him it's all carefully crafted bullshit.


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Who is going to plow the snow from the highways in the Huntsville corridor?

That’s a question far removed from Westminster, where Prime Minister Theresa May faces calls for a full and speedy investigation into the liquidation of Carillion, the mammoth construction and outsourcing company, headquartered in Wolverhampton, with about 43,000 employees spread across the U.K., the Middle East and Canada.

This is the same company that launched its Toronto operations in 1955 as George Wimpey Canada Ltd. Home buyers in the 1970s particularly will recall the name.

A corporate history recounts how the British firm capitalized on Toronto’s desperate need for housing construction, attesting that by 1970, “Wimpey was building nearly 2,000 homes each year in the province of Ontario alone.” Crispy press clippings recount stories of hundreds of eager house buyers lining up for pre-build sales at subdivisions where detached homes sold for between $40,000 and $50,000.

The name Carillion emerged as the successor support and construction services provider, and it became a monster, benefitting spectacularly from the now decades-long trend of outsourcing private sector contracts and being in the right place at the right time for enormous public-private partnership (P3) construction projects. Those P3s here at home included the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital as well as design-build work at both the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

Public sector outsourcing is a key part of the puzzle. According to the Guardian, Christopher Grayling, the U.K.’s secretary of state for transport, awarded nearly £2-billion worth of contracts to Carillion plc, even after it first issued profit warnings. Little wonder that the Labour party is accusing the government of “drip-feeding” contracts to Carillion to help keep it afloat.

Last July, Carillion launched a full strategic review of all operations. A hoped-for sale of its Canadian subsidiary was deemed essential to the financial fix. Instead, underperforming P3 contracts and an estimated net debt of between ₤825 million and ₤850 million dominated the company’s financial update to investors in September. The numbers only grew worse. Carillion Canada did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokesperson indicated to The Canadian Press that the Canadian operations would carry on as per usual.

Let’s look at some smaller numbers.

https://www.thestar.com/business/op...e-shows-limits-of-our-drive-to-outsource.html
 
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