Peter Foster: 'Kill the Avatar bill!'
9 Mar 2010 at 7:49pm

If passed, Bill C-300 would open up Canadian companies to attacks by those who believe mining should stop

By Peter Foster

‘K

ill the Avatar bill!" That’s the cry at this week’s annual meeting of The Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada in Toronto. Not quite in those words, mind you, but the private member’s bill in question, C-300, is based on the same lurid anti-capitalist, anti-mining fantasies that provided the psychic substructure for James Cameron’s mega-grossing but Oscar-short movie.

Activists last week bought an ad in Hollywood organ Variety to suggest analogies between oilsands development and the sci-fi epic’s tale of interplanetary resource rape and alien cultural genocide. So far, C-300’s supporters don’t seem to have followed that tack, but then perhaps that’s because they include the Catholic Church, which has condemned Avatar for its mystic eco-mumbo jumbo (I know. Pot. Kettle. Etc.)

This week, the PDAC opened a campaign to bombard MPs with letters opposing this potentially disastrous piece of legislation. The real wonder is that the bill, which was proposed by Liberal MP and NGO stooge John McKay, is still alive. In fact, having survived prorogation, it seems to stand little chance of passing a third reading, but then it was never expected to pass a second reading.

Bill C-300 would open Canadian companies to an onslaught of accusations and investigations promoted by people whose fundamental stance is that mining activity should be stopped. Those found “guilty” under this process would have government support — in the form of Export Development Corporation loan guarantees, or investment by the Canada Pension Plan — withdrawn. There is a good case that such government support should not exist in the first place, but the real threat of the bill is that of constant harassment of Canadian companies under a never-ending stream of bogus complaints.

Parliamentary committee hearings — where libels can be freely tossed around — have already heard a bizarre procession of tales of rape, murder and other indignities that seem rooted much more in the kind of anti-capitalist psychopathology channelled onto Pandora than on planet Earth. Here, mining operations bring jobs and hope, often to desperately poor people who haven’t solved transportation problems by plugging into pteradacyls.

Canadian mining giants Barrick, Goldcorp and Kinross Gold last year submitted a lengthy joint statement to the committee on the numerous flaws and dangers of the bill, which would put Canadian companies at a competitive disadvantage, damage their reputations, undermine their good work and induce them to leave Canada for less punitive jurisdictions.

However, mining companies are somewhat culpable for bringing this on themselves. They have eagerly donned the poisoned mantle of “corporate social responsibility” — along with its matching choker of “sustainable development” — without sufficiently examining potential hidden agendas, or naively believing that their enemies could be reasoned with, and, like themselves, just wanted a “better world.”

Opposition to development is often spearheaded not by local people but by big, well-funded, international NGOs whose leaders delight in bringing industry to heel, and for whom misinformation and misrepresentation are fund-raising tools.

C-300’s origins lay in the success of these NGOs in insinuating themselves into the political process. This could not have happened without politicians opening the corridors of power to the NGO Trojan Horse. This open door policy has been synonymous with the rise of radical environmentalism, which has in turn been part of a larger political strategy to rescue socialist economics from the dustbin of history.

One of the masterminds of this plan was Canadian Maurice Strong, who was also a central figure in setting up the pseudo-scientific process of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Significantly, one of the major sources of government funding for the NGOs behind Bill C-300 is the Canadian International Development Agency, an agency founded by Mr. Strong.

The NGO fight is being waged not merely at the level of backdoor legislation and pressure on individual mining companies. Major financial institutions are also subject to pressure, under the threat of campaigns aimed at their customers. Last week, for example, the Royal Bank’s annual meeting was the target of anti-oilsands activists.

There is no doubt that income from resource development often serves to bolster unsavoury regimes, but without wishing to preach anything that sounds like rationalization, if Canadian companies — which have the highest operating standards in the world — do not explore and develop, then there are plenty of Chinese and Russian state-owned companies willing to step into the breach.

Canadian companies already face enormous problems in doing straight business with crooked — or merely economic nationalist — governments. The last thing they need is to have the other hand tied behind their backs by government-funded anti-development eco-fanatics. Not only does Bill C-300 deserve to be deep sixed, but the bogus posturing of its promoters should be exposed for the wealth- and job-destroying political shake-down that it is.

C-300 has been advertised as an act respecting “Corporate Accountability,” but when will there be some accountability for NGOs, who perpetually operate from a sick, one-dimensional script as fantastic as anything seen on Pandora?

For more from this author, visit the FP Comment blog | Subscribe to feed

Opening the book selling market to foreign competition would help consumers. Ottawa should take up the cause

By Michael Taube

I

ndigo Books & Music Inc. is far and away Canada’s largest bookstore chain of the bricks and mortar variety. But there’s an obvious reason for this: Heather Reisman, Indigo’s controlling shareholder, has what looks like a near-monopoly when it comes to both walk-in customers and people who are unwilling to provide private information and credit card numbers to order books online.  

There’s hasn’t been a free market in bookstores in Canada for almost two decades. Now may be a good time to try it.

For most Canadians, choosing to go to an Indigo in a mall versus going to an Indigo a few blocks away isn’t a choice at all. On the Internet, Indigo faces limited competition. Amazon offers amazon.com and amazon.ca as an alternative, but Amazon’s business expansion capacity is limited in Canada by federal protectionist rules that prohibit it from actually owning and operating its own distribution system. Now Amazon wants to expand its Canadian operation, much to the chagrin of Canada’s smaller bookstores.

Oddly, Indigo’s dominance of the bookselling retail market is rarely criticized. When U.S. book companies such as Barnes & Noble even dare to express mild interest in competing against Canadian booksellers in Canada, the reaction is horror and Ottawa complies by maintaining ownership rules.

Indigo’s financial success, meantime, seems solid while protected from foreign competition. Revenues and profits have held up well through the recession. In its latest quarter, Indigo’s reported revenue of $340.2-million and profits of $34.5-million. Would it be able to withstand a more direct assault from Amazon?

Amazon.com recently sent in an application to open a distribution centre in Canada.  Although the U.S. online retailing giant has a Canadian presence in Amazon.ca through a distribution deal with Canada Post, it doesn’t even have a warehouse on Canadian soil. If the federal government approves this application — and it  might, considering the recent federal budget’s call for relaxing foreign ownership rules for some industries — thingswould change in a hurry.

As usual, the Canadian Booksellers Association is screaming bloody murder. It wants Ottawa to block Amazon.com’s plan, believing that it would contravene the Investment Canada Act and, “detrimentally affect independent businesses and...raise serious concerns over the protection of our cultural industries.”

But here’s where things start to get interesting. Heather Reisman, the CEO of Indigo, may not be happy about having to face Amazon.com on more equal footing, but she told the Globe and Mail that if Amazon were allowed in, the rules should change across the board. “Supposing I should decide three years from now that, in order to expand some of my capability, I’d like to partner up with a foreign company.  I do not want to be disadvantaged.”  Instead of going along with the CBA’s backward nationalist strategy, Ms. Reisman appears to have shifted her support toward establishing business partnerships with international booksellers.  

To a small extent, Ms. Reisman has already done that. Indigo recently transferred its fledgling digital reading initiative into a newly-formed company, Kobo Inc., by raising $16-million in capital. Indigo provided $5-million, but the balance came from what the company called “strategic partners” that include the U.S. book giant Borders Group Inc.

Once again, technology is driving change in the book industry. To Ms. Reisman’s credit, she realizes that this is an important opportunity to stay ahead of the bookselling curve, both domestically and internationally. Ultimately, international booksellers seem destined to be able to set up shop in Canada one day. Ms. Reisman seems to see this coming, or is at least willing to live with the risk.  

Of course, Ms. Reisman is well aware that the future value of Indigo, should her control be put up for sale, would be much higher if ownership rules  were changed. Other Canadian retailers — from Future Shop to The Bay to Home Depot — eventually became foreign-owned companies

 Canadian and international companies fight on relatively level playing fields for customers and profits.  There’s no reason to believe that the same thing wouldn’t happen if an American bookstore chain such as Borders — with whom Ms. Reisman tried to form a bricks-and-mortar bookstore partnership with in 1996 — were allowed into Canada.

It’s now up to Ottawa to ensure that Amazon.com is allowed to build a Canadian-based distribution centre to help break down foreign ownership barriers and create a more competitive environment for books and all the other products now sold through the bookstore window. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an intellectual who enjoys books and he must realize that Canadian consumers deserve to have more choice. If Heather Reisman gets it, he should, too.

Financial Post
Michael Taube is a Toronto-based writer.

Photo: Heather Reisman, Indigo’s CEO, would benefit from rule change (Canwest News Service).

For more from this author, visit the FP Comment blog | Subscribe to feed

Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes, cautioned comedian Billy Connolly. "After that, who cares, you're a mile away and you've got his shoes."

The Conservative Party displayed a similarly flagrant disregard for due process, property rights and good manners last year in its treatment of former prime minister Brian Mulroney. But events this week suggest the Prime Minister may have had second thoughts about slicing-and-dicing his own party in the same way that he has carved up the opposition.  

Stephen Harper emerged on the national scene as a Reformer, in opposition to Mr. Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government, and the two men were never close.

Relations thawed enough that they talked when Mr. Harper came to power but turned icy again when Mr. Harper announced a public inquiry into Mr. Mulroney's business dealings with German lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber and instructed cabinet members to cut off all communication with the former prime minister.

By the time Mr. Harper's office briefed journalists that Mr. Mulroney was no longer a card-carrying Conservative last April, the temperature had dropped to somewhere close to the average February chill at the corner of Portage and Main in Winnipeg.

The problem for the Prime Minister was that many of his caucus did not share his dim view of Mr. Mulroney. At the government's weekly caucus meeting, former Progressive Conservatives like Calgary MP Lee Richardson and Defence Minister Peter MacKay were vocal in their support of Mr. Mulroney and his achievements.

The bad blood created by the ill-judged decision to cast the former prime minister into political perdition, even before he'd had the opportunity to defend himself before the Oliphant public inquiry, was perhaps the closest the modern federal Conservative Party has come to splintering into its ancestral tribes.

With Mr. Harper now in his fourth year as Prime Minister, and by all accounts starting to think about a life after politics, those old divisions are more apparent today than they were in 2006. When two or three Conservatives are gathered together these days, talk inevitably turns to succession.

Support for a particular candidate is invariably contingent on whether you're talking to a former Progressive Conservative or Reformer. While the cracks have been papered over in Ottawa, in Alberta federal Conservatives are finding members of their riding executive boards choosing sides between the provincial PCers and the Wildrose Alliance. A repeat of this split federally would quickly lead the Conservative Party across the aisle in the House of Commons and into permanent opposition.  

It is against this background that Mr. Mulroney was unofficially declared persona grata and two-thirds of the cabinet ministers dutifully trekked along to Montreal last September for the 25th anniversary celebration of his 1984 election sweep, when his party won 211 of 282 seats.

Like the Arthurian legend of the wounded king restored through the actions of the Holy Grail, Mr. Mulroney has now officially resumed his place in the pantheon of great Canadian Conservatives. On Monday night, at a glittering dinner on the ninth floor of Pearson Building, home to the Department of Foreign Affairs, he was feted for his part in Canada's entry into the Organization of American States 20 years ago.

The government-sponsored dinner was attended by four ministers - Lawrence Cannon, Peter Kent, Bev Oda and Peter Van Loan - and it sounds as if both sides were trying to make nice.

Mr. Mulroney said that Canadian interests had been well-served by the government's "enlightened foreign policy" in Latin America that has helped boost Canada's trade in the region seven-fold since the late 1980s.

While he said he once told Mr. Harper that "all prime ministers have to learn a little humility", the over-riding tone was positive, particularly in regard to the pursuit of free trade deals with countries like Colombia - legislation for which was re-introduced in the House of Commons yesterday.

Mr. Mulroney's optimistic take on the OAS as "the paramount damage control agency" in the region may be at odds with the reality - critics contend that its tradition of reaching decisions by consensus means that it does not make any substantive decisions. Moreover, late last month, Latin American and Caribbean countries set up a rival organization that excludes Canada and the United States - a move welcomed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as a move away from U.S. "colonizing" in the region.

But the night was perhaps as much a celebration of Mr. Mulroney's reintegration into the Conservative family as it was about the effectiveness of the OAS.

The question now is whether the Harperites will still be willing to walk in the former prime minister's shoes at the end of May when Justice Jeffrey Oliphant hands down his report into the Mulroney-Schrieber affair.

John Ivison
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Britain already leads the world in spying on its citizens with closed-circuit cameras. There are 4.2 million cameras in Britain, one for every 14 people, and twice as many as China uses to keep control if its 1.3 billion people, according to the Daily Mail.

You'd think that would satisfy the government's need to intrude on the lives of the average Brit, but not even close. The latest scheme is aimed at extending state control over dogs.

The Independent reports that plans are under consideration to force dog owners to buy insurance to cover themselves in case their pet attacks someone, and also to require that every dog be microchipped.

Ministers are also considering introducing New Dog Control Notices for misbehaving animals.

The "Dogbo" orders would allow police officers and council officials to force miscreant owners to muzzle, leash or even neuter their pets.

In extreme cases the dogs could even be confiscated and given to new owners.

This is obviously a display of pet discrimination, since apparently no one is talking about microchipping cats, or forcing people who own snakes, spiders and other icky "pets" to declare their problem and get some help.

The restrictions are part of a revamp of Britain's Dangerous Dogs Act, aimed at dealing with an upsurge in people who breed or buy vicious animals as "weapons."

Ministers are also considering making it a criminal offence for a dog owner to allow their animal to be "dangerously out of control".

Currently they are only breaking the law if the dog is out of control in a public place.

The change would extend the law to private residences, and could provide extra protection for postmen. There is also concern about the widespread use of dogs as weapons on inner city estates.

So if Bowser gets a bit antsy because you're late with the Ken-L-Ration and the neighbour decides he's out of control, the canine cops can bust down your door and demand to see his chip. Mailmen are delighted of course. Ministers admitted there could be some technical difficulties, especially in regards to establishing ownership, given the notorious unreliability of dogs under questioning. But presumably they'll have plenty of evidence, with the help of all those closed circuit cameras.

Still, you have to wonder about that country. Britain's also the place that had to develop a special non-shattering beer glass to keep Brits from cutting each other to pieces in pub brawls. You see what happens with 12 years of Labour government? If the dogs have to be chipped, how long before the owners need one as well?

Kelly McParland
National Post

Photo: (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Other than attacking colonialism and noshing with the Queen. South African President Jacob Zuma had something specific in mind when he recently visited Britain.

Condoms.

South Africa is hosting the FIFA World Cup this spring, an is concerned there won't be enough condoms to deal with the anticipated 500,000 visitors, who apparently do more on these junkets than just watch soccer. The government wants to stockpile 1 billion condoms.

Yes, one billion. That's 20 condoms for everyone in South Africa. And you thought Whistler was a party.

Zuma asked Britain's help in meeting the need. It's not clear whether he put the problem personally to the Queen, but you never know. The man is working on his sixth wife, and has 20 children or so, give or take. According to UK news reports, the government is obliging with enough money for 42 million condoms. That should take care of Zuma, but what about everyone else? 

 Britain is to give 42m condoms to South Africa in response to a request for an extra billion as part of an HIV prevention drive before the World Cup, the government will announce today.

The request for British help in stockpiling sufficient condoms for the expected influx of thousands of football supporters in three months' time was made during President Jacob Zuma's recent visit to the UK to meet the Queen.

"Obviously there's a big focus on the World Cup coming up and a huge increase in the number of people coming into South Africa," said the international development minister, Gareth Thomas, who will announce the £1m funding today at an emergency summit in London on HIV prevention and treatment. "The South Africans have identified themselves the need to get more condoms in place. South Africa specifically asked for British assistance and we are responding to that request."

He pointed out that the fans would inevitably spill over into neighbouring African countries with high HIV rates, which would also need to take precautions.

National Post

Photo: Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and South African President Jacob Zuma with one of his wives during his state visit to Britain  (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AFP/Getty Images)