Canadian Government Approves Nexon Buyout By Chinese Government
In 2008, close to zero percent of Canada’s massive resource economy was owned by foreign governments. That has changed considerably. While Canada has moved to “privatize” Crown corporations – simultaneously, ownership of Canada’s natural resources by foreign governments has risen drastically to an estimated 20% of all Canada’s natural resources. Since the federal Conservatives have been in office from 2006, this has all been under the Conservative government’s watch; however, Prime Minister Stephan Harper has promised that this will be the end of the trend. This is significant and numerous ways, not the least of which is Canada’s dependence on natural resource wealth to provide the standard of living that Canadians have become accustomed to. For example, studies have demostrated that while virually no one enjoys paying taxes, very few Canadians actually pay more into the system than what they get out of it. In short, without natural resource wealth, the Canadian standard of living is not sustainable. The vast majority of us would be forced to live in high rise apartments as property taxes on a house would have to be in the neighbourhood of $40,000 per household. Much of our infrastructure is paid for from resource wealth revenue transfers.
