FIPA Agreement with China: What's Really in it for Canada?

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By Patrick Brown, CBC News Sep 23, 2014

Canadian government has been playing down domestic objections to investment agreement with China

The secrecy shrouding the much-delayed Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China makes it hard for experts, let alone average Canadians, to figure out what benefits this country will see from the deal.

While reporting on Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the first time, during his visit to China in early 2012, I wrote a column with the headline Great Glorious and Always Correct, which began: “If Stephen Harper ever gets tired of being Canada’s Prime Minister, he might like to consider a second career in China – he’d fit right in.”

Used to a degree of give and take with previous prime ministers on the road, I had been struck by Harper’s similarity to a Chinese official surrounded by a servile entourage, and by the transformation of the parliamentary press gallery into a steno pool.

“The ‘press availability’ consists of six journalists asking their prepared questions in turn, each receiving a prepared answer which has been carefully redacted to give as little information as possible, paint as rosy a picture as possible, and claim as much credit as possible,” I wrote. “When Chinese officials discuss their own wise and far-seeing policies, it’s customary to describe the Communist Party of China as Great, Glorious, and Always Correct. It’s a phrase Harper might consider borrowing."

I pointed out how, having spent a total of less than a week in China (including his first visit in 2009), Harper claimed to have:

• Developed new ways of dealing with his Chinese counterparts that had eluded his weak and foolish predecessors.
• Negotiated an agreement on FIPA, which those same predecessors had tried and failed to negotiate for two decades.
• To have wangled a couple of pandas where previous panda-seeking prime ministers had always been denied.

The pandas duly arrived in Toronto, and have been happily munching on gourmet bamboo and delighting zoo visitors ever since. But the Foreign Investment agreement, known as FIPA, quickly disappeared from view.

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