Newman: Who benefits from applying the ‘net benefit test’ to the CNOCC-Nexen deal?

By:
Don Newman
/
9 August, 2012
By: Don Newman
Chairman of Canada 2020, Senior Columnist with ipolitics.ca

Canadians can benefit if the government applies the “net benefit” test to prohibit the CNOOC takeover of Nexen.

The only Canadians who will benefit if the deal goes ahead are those Canadians who hold Nexen shares and stand to get a sixty-one per cent premium over what the market thinks the shares are worth.

The other net benefit will go to the Chinese government as it continues its rampage to scoop up natural resources anywhere it can find them.

For the Canadian Government it should be obvious that this is not a business deal, it is a political issue.

What is the net benefit in taking a thriving company forever out of the free market, and turning it in a vassal organization of a foreign government that has a terrible human rights record, manipulates its currency to the detriment of the rest of its trading partners, bullies its smaller neighbours in the South China Sea, manipulates rare earth shipments to pressure Japan, and is protecting the murderous regime in Syria from UN action.

Before you click away, we’d like to ask you for a favour … 

 

Journalism in Canada has suffered a devastating decline over the last two decades. Dozens of newspapers and outlets have shuttered. Remaining newsrooms are smaller. Nowhere is this erosion more acute than in the coverage of foreign policy and international news. It’s expensive, and Canadians, oceans away from most international upheavals, pay the outside world comparatively little attention.

At Open Canada, we believe this must change. If anything, the pandemic has taught us we can’t afford to ignore the changing world. What’s more, we believe, most Canadians don’t want to. Many of us, after all, come from somewhere else and have connections that reach around the world.

Our mission is to build a conversation that involves everyone — not just politicians, academics and policy makers. We need your help to do so. Your support helps us find stories and pay writers to tell them. It helps us grow that conversation. It helps us encourage more Canadians to play an active role in shaping our country’s place in the world.

Become a Supporter