To the Editor,
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has taken the first step in selling off our country’s natural resources to China with the Nexen takeover by China National Offshore Oil Co.
This is a bad deal for Canadians and a huge step in the wrong direction for climate change if the tar sands are exploited to their fullest extent.
As you know, Harper has also been trying to pass the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection Act. If the act passes, it will be open season on all our natural resources.
We will have no control over processes or quotas, China will be able to take as much as they want and any way they want, no matter how harmful it is to our environment.
If we hinder their profits in any way, they can and will sue us in secret tribunals.
This deal is far more dangerous than the North American Free Trade Agreement agreement Brian Mulroney signed. Canada has already spent hundreds of millions in lawsuits from that. When China is done with us in 30 years, there will not be a lot left.
Harper must protect Canadians, Canadian democracy and our natural resources from corporate greed.
Now that he has allowed this damaging Nexen takeover, he must not pass the secretive and extreme FIPA.
Alf Holbrook
Nanaimo