Harper sells out Canada to China

Help battle the takeover of Canada’s natural resources by foreign governments—it can be stopped!

By Emma Pullman –

Prime Minister Stephen Harper just approved the dangerous takeover of Nexen and its Canadian oil sands holdings by one of China’s biggest fossil fuel corporations, CNOOC. Now it’s 10 times more important to stop the secretive and extreme FIPA trade deal with China, which would give CNOOC vast new powers. Can you help us flood Canadian newspapers with letters to the editor holding Harper accountable for this terrible deal? CLICK HERE

Friday night Dec. 7, 2012 at 5pm — the time of the week when the government “dumps” news it doesn’t want people to hear about — Harper shamelessly approved the controversial takeover by the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) of Nexen.

Harper knows that pundits, Canadians and even his own caucus were nervous about this deal, so he passed it at the end of a media cycle when he thought few people would notice. He believes that Canadians aren’t paying attention. And any day, he could do the same thing and unilaterally pass the extreme and secretive Canada-China FIPA.

We urgently need to show Harper that Canadians are paying attention, and that he can’t govern by keeping people in the dark and selling out our natural resources to corporate greed.

It’s clear that Prime Minister Harper was afraid of the backlash from Canadians opposed to this deal. Not only did he try to bury the news story by announcing the takeover at 5pm on a Friday, but he went to great lengths in his remarks to try to claim that the Nexen deal was a one-off event, not the beginning of a trend of takeovers of Canadian tar sands companies by foreign corporations.

But here’s the catch: The Canada-China FIPA was designed to encourage China’s companies to invest in the Canadian resource sector. If Harper passes the secretive and extreme FIPA deal, it will make the Nexen deal 10 times worse in every way — and open the floodgates to more bad deals. CNOOC will be able to sue Canadian governments in secret tribunals if those governments do anything to counter its growing interests — including common-sense environmental protections and job creation efforts.

At SumOfUs.org, our mission is to hold corporations accountable and challenge corporate power all over the world. We’re opposed to the Nexen takeover and FIPA deal because together they constitute a massive handover of power from the Canadian people and our democratic governments, to unaccountable corporations interested solely in profit. These deals are bad for Canada’s environment and workers, and they’re also terrible for the global climate — because if corporations exploit our massive tar sand reserves to their fullest extent, there’s no way for the world to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Canadians are watching our government closely now, and after the CNOOC takeover, our government absolutely must not pass the FIPA investor deal.

http://act.sumofus.org/go/1049?t=2&akid=1111.807162.7fm2b-

We need to make sure that the Nexen takeover doesn’t get buried in a media cycle. Every Canadian needs to know that, especially now that the Nexen takeover has been approved, we absolutely cannot allow the FIPA deal to pass.

Please help flood Canadian newspapers with letters to the editor about Nexen, FIPA and Harper’s agenda to sell out our natural resources. Our simple online toolkit makes it fast and easy.

Together, we can still forestall the worst impacts of the Nexen takeover by stopping FIPA. http://act.sumofus.org/go/1049?t=2&akid=1111.807162.7fm2b-