Premier Off to Asia
Prince George, B.C.- It is the seventh trade mission to Asia for Premier Christy Clark and she is taking along 78 reps from businesses and organizations.
The focus of the week long trip will be try to open trade opportunities in the Phillippines and new export markets in technology and liquefied natural gas (LNG) with established trade partners in Japan and South Korea.
Businesses and organizations representing a wide variety of sectors, from international education and digital media, to LNG, clean technology and professional services are taking part in this trade trip.
The Premier Clark will also promote the free trade opportunities created under the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement, which came into effect Jan. 1, 2015, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is in the ratification process. Canada and Japan are both signatories to the TPP, which is expected to grow B.C. exports by $350 million annually and create more than 2,500 jobs around the province.
Comments
Maybe Clark should tell the Phillippines that we will conduct trade with them when they nuke the terrorists that cut off the head of a Canadian.
To be fair to the Philippines, the government has no sympathy for the terrorists. Abu Sayaf is a fairly small group in the one part of the Philippines that is dominated by Muslims. If the government could easily root them out, it would. This is not a case like Pakistan where the Islamists are arm-in-arm with part of the government.
What a waste of time Christy pursuing her LNG pipe dream. Christy can move and stay in the Philippines fulltime, because there is no way she can influence their investment decisions on BC LNG… not while LNG prices world wide have tanked. Just how bad is it? Take a look at LNG prices over the past ten (10) years!
www .nasdaq.com/markets/natural-gas.aspx?timeframe=10y
Why wouldn’t she move there?
“In my heart, I am Filipina” – Christy Clark June 3 2012
What a giant waste of money, and we as tax payers are just paying for her holiday. We need to have more BC based business that use our own labor and resources. Election is coming up again soon Crispy Crunch.
You wrote: “We need to have more BC based business that use our own labor and resources”
The article states: “Businesses and organizations representing a wide variety of sectors, from international education and digital media, to LNG, clean technology and professional services are taking part in this trade trip.”
So, you obviously are one of those who does not understand what you read. It is called functional illiteracy.
The are not going on a buying spree. They are going on a selling attempt. How well they do, we shall see … maybe.
The least you can do is understand the purpose of the trip and drop you biases.
“The least you can do is understand the purpose of the trip and drop your biases.”
You are asking the impossible. She goes – that is wrong! If she would NOT go the biased person would slam her too, like what is she doing sitting on her rear end instead of getting on the airplane to drum up some business!
no matter what the headlines say, I still think it is a paid holiday at our expense.
Obviously you have never had to travel for a living. It gets pretty tiring after a while. Some can be a holiday if one stays on for a couple of days. If there are meetings with different people in the morning, the afternoon and then the evening, one typically goes to bed at night tired of being on view and best behaviour all day long.
Give me the comfort of home anytime over what some might call a working holiday.
You’re so busy defending her, it makes me wonder what your seat number on the plane is?
I bring experience to my words.
What do you bring to yours? If it is travel, you must have been on a lot of junkets.
Ugh I’m with you, I don’t travel much for work but when I do it’s nonstop and I can’t wait to get home. And as great as it is to eat out occasionally, doing it for a week or more straight sucks.
The new voting generation is not to have a balanced budget, the bigger the deficit the better. Why would you want somebody in there that comes up with a surplus… Christy Clark has to go. The spend trend, because it is the right thing to do.
Your sarcasm is justified by evidence. Why bother with a surplus?
I’d like to know when all of you people, who want the government to quit spending, will give up your care cards to help the government give you your wish.
We’re not allowed to do that. Being enrolled in the BC Medical Services Plan isn’t ‘voluntary’, like it was when it was first started under WAC Bennett. It’s ‘mandatory’. For every BC citizen. Has been ever since “fat little Dave” Barrett was Premier. And they call it a ‘free country’.
@socredible
Even if it was voluntary, I doubt any of you “balance the budget” types would volunteer to give up your medicare. The only way you types want the budget balanced is if the economic pain only applies to people other than yourselves.
Did she take her fold-up table and fancy dinnerware with her? Never know who might want to sit with her and have their fortune told.
Has anybody noticed that the vast majority of those that are criticizing Christy Clark for her trade mission are for the most part the very same people that would jump to Justin’s defence for his trade mission?
Sounds like a case of “Right Wing trade missions BAD, Left Wing trade missions GOOD” haha!
I have, indeed.
It comes as no surprise to me since people on this and other blogs generally align themselves with the political right or the political left and worry little about those many cases where both sides will do the reasonable thing to keep the country or the province going towards a stronger economic, social or environmental position.
To me that puts those people into the partisan and even fanatic category instead of in the objective or impartial category. In other words, things are either black or white when in reality the world is many shades of grey.
After all, it is easy. One does not have to think. One follows the Trumps or the Bernies of the world next door and is done with their thinking so that they can then go back to watching Netflix to immerse themselves into the worlds of their fantasies.
BTW, it must be hard for those who support the left leaning centrist government of Canada while not supporting the right leaning, centrist government of BC to note that Trudeau is in Japan a few days early for the G7 summit to drum up continued and additional investment of Japan in Canada. Great minds of the left and the right thinkin alike, or possibly even cooperating. What a thought!!!
With respect to LNG, for instance, the linked site below states:
“Japan, the world’s biggest buyer of LNG, is hoping Canada will issue necessary environmental permits to allow companies to export it from British Columbia.
“Canada is one of the most-promising potential exporters to Japan because … liquefied natural gas occupies a still very important share in our energy policy,” said Monji (Japanese PM), who noted that Japanese companies are involved in several LNG projects in Canada.
thestar.com/news/world/2016/05/22/trudeau-aims-to-rejuvenate-trade-ties-in-visit-to-japan.html
Sometimes it is difficult to keep one’s eyes on the pea.
“It comes as no surprise to me since people on this and other blogs”
This has never been Just a blog .
Stop trying to act like you are some kind of moderate centrist. Your rantings regarding Trudeau gives you zero credibility in criticizing other peoples observations regarding Christy Clark, her policies or her actions.
Also, it is hardly a dichotomy if a supporter of Trudeau supports his trade missions versus Christy Clark’s. I wouldn’t expect anything different from a rabid right winger (such as yourself) when it comes to supporting “right wing” trade missions vs “left wing” trade missions.
Hahaha, I was simply pointing out an observation!
Obviously my comment struck a bit too close to home for you!
Please let me know if I have hurt your feelings so that I can apologize and make it all go away! Heck, if it works for Justin…….!
Hahaha!
(I sense some more negative scores coming!) ;-)
Hart Guy, nothing you post could ever hurt my feelings, because I put what you post on the level of a Donald Trump proclamation: laughable nonsense. Your last comment is a perfect example. As for negative scores, if they happen then they won’t come from me. I rarely up or down vote comments.
The only reason Christy is going to Asia is because she had a sudden hankering for Asian food and there is nothing that tastes better than the real thing, especially when it is paid for by someone else.
Go to Richmond, look for a reasonable number of older Chinese people sitting at a Chinese restaurant and you will have the “real” thing put in front of you.
I prefer the Canadian/USA version in most instances. The Chinese version is often far too exotic for me.
BTW, how many more of these ditties do you have? You trying to resurrect Donald Rumsfeld humour? Kind of old stuff.
Oh, I need to explain “exotic” in this case.
Sweet and sour pork or honey garlic pork with more bones and gristle than meat. Go to the Yaohan Centre food court in Richmond sometime and you will know what I am talking about.
Nothing beats reading all the above erudite, educated and valuable research based comments in respect to the Premier’s trip accompanied by 78 representatives from business and organizations.
The best one is the one about the yearning for real Asian food! Very perceptive, indeed.
Maybe everyone is just fed up with all the empty promises and out-right lies Christy has been selling for the past 15 years. The Jobs Plan was a bust, LNG is a lying pipe dream, instead we have had a steady diet of stagnation.
Now we are suppose to be impressed with yet another trade mission??? What about the last trade mission to China? Any measurable results from that one? Nope… sorry… its time to show Christy and her government the door!
That may well be so, but just what’s better that we’re going to replace her with? At the moment there seems to be a complete absence of any viable alternative. Don’t believe for a minute that a John Horgan led NDP would work towards using BC resources and BC labor to make the Province internally self-sufficient in a way that would allow BC consumers to be able to buy themselves what we now HAVE TO export just to get enough ‘money’ to continue to live. They may like to, but financially they’re going to be just as dependent as Christy’s crowd is to sell into global markets. And they won’t be price makers, they’ll be price takers ~ desperate to get whatever’s offered. If anything.
Id love to see a cost analysis of keeping her over there as opposed to bringing her back .
Exactly what “trade opportunities” are Christy and the gang of 78 going open up in the Phillippines? I mean what do the Phillippines have to offer to us in the way of trade when the only thing they have to trade is their people?
Yeah, we’ll send them lumber and they will send us more workers to staff Tim Hortons. I can’t see how that will benefit the rest of us but I guess that works for the owners of Tim Horton franchises. Get dealin’ Christy.
As for Japan and LNG, what opportunities lie there? We have zero LNG production and none coming on line for the forseeable future. Christy has been hanging the LNG carrot out for so long that it is just a dry husk. LNG exports are dead as the YXS plan to be an air freight hub to Asia.
Look how that worked out. A massive runway with an underused refueling area and not one air freight jet since the stuff was built. The only result of that big idea was a massive crime against the environment being committed along the Boundary Road corridor.
So you’ll excuse me if I think that Christy Clark and the gang of 78s ” “trade mission” is nothing more than a waste of jet fuel and the addition of more carbon into our ever warming atmosphere. But, hey, come July 1st, Christy will give us the “gift” of two more cents per liter to the “carbon tax”, so we can contribute to her fight against global warming. Jes….
On the upside , the harbour on vanisle will get a break from the bc liberal excremental wave .
Part of the reason for the drop in LNG prices was the fact that Japan went back to producing electricity using nuclear plants.
Japan is not likely to deep six their present suppliers of LNG for Canadian LNG, at least not anytime soon considering we do not have any exporting facilities built, nor are we likely to in the immediate future. So what do we have to trade with Japan??
The big natural gas exporters are New Zealand, Brunei, and now the USA. The USA has the plants already built or building to cover any increases in natural gas until at least 2020. We have a world wide glut of natural gas.
Perhaps with the real big problems we are facing in regards to the Softwood Lumber Agreement, she should try to get Japan to buy more lumber, at least then we would have an alternative to the USA if they stomp us on Softwood Lumber Exports.
What we have in BC is an NDP party that couldn’t govern under any conditions, and a liberal government that couldn’t sell shoe polish to a shoe shine boy.
BC is in serious trouble from a political standpoint.
Pal , you are having a Kodak moment . Did you know that Portugal ran four days last week on renewables only ?
Hey stockaloss what about the other 361 days? Please tell about your system and why you don’t invest in solar.
For the rest of you, did the down turn in the world economy have at least a bit part in the fall of lng sales and the upsurge in fracturing?
Then there is the alphabet soup of unelected ngo’s against everything.
Stockaloss you left out the part 1 third of the energy in Portugal is hydro which is included in renewables out put. Also what you also left out rather conveniently the high cost of inefficient wind and solar has almost broken the economy of Portugal also giving it some of the highest eletricity costs in Europe.
Oh those four days of high wind output was the result of a storm.
I did not leave out anything salesmutt . Your storm theory is as bs as your hot coal tip . Soros in 2015 bought into Peabody energy which last month filed for bankruptcy protection. He also bought into Arch which is now selling over the counter pink sheets at .37 cents and is on life support . Great example from you slimming in just before midnight . No ideas at all and not much class either . I’m having another great day in the markets because I never take bs at face value . I fact check everything . What gives you righties the right to constantly lie ? Try and spell George Soros’s last name backwards . You might get that one right .
Stockaloss, did you know BC electrical supply is 100% renewable.
So you are saying Portugal used no petroleum products those four days? And yes there was a storm.
Pretty well every thing we export to Japan has a tariff applied to it. We export billions of dollars to Japan and could do a lot more if these tariffs were removed. Some are as high as 50%.
Some Canadian lumber business’s state that Japan has discriminatory tariff’s on Canadian lumber, that they do not apply to other Countries.
If Canada approves the TPP trade agreement, a lot if not all of these tariffs will disappear, if it is not approved then we are in for a serious reduction in exports.
The only thing that will disappear if the TPP is approved is the remainder of the “manufacturing” end of the forestry industry in this province, along with any remaining shreds of provincial and national sovereignty that managed to survive NAFTA.
Get real Palopu. Haven’t you heard… The Japanese insisted lumber not be included in TPP as the Americans did with NAFTA. That was the sticking point with Harper, but he signed it anyway. No benefit to forestry from TPP, just globalist bankers and arbitrage specialists with labor, the environment and other regulations. It’s all about corporate government having primacy over national democratic governments and that is it. What trade is in the deal only makes up a very small portion of the laws that would come into effect.
This could be one of the biggest trade missions of her premiership. The Philippines just elected a new President only a week ago that promises to be the biggest political shift in that country since the Americans defeated the Spanish over hundred years ago.
The new Filipino president Deturte is the first ever from outside of Manila and won based on his ideas to federalize the Philippines. He was the mayor of Davoa for 36years up until now. Davao is the second largest city in the Philippines, but was utterly neglected by the previous governments, being that it is the largest city on Mindinao in the South of the Philippines. A city that strives to be the next Singapour or Hong Kong as a trading hub.
Duterte has huge plans to modernize Davao and the South and is planning to spend billions doing this for things like lite rail, modern freeways, and land line fiber optics… All services that BC is a world leader in. Also BC based mining companies are the largest industrial companies in parts of that country so there is already strong reasons for face to face communications involving trade.
I think it’s a coup for Christy Clark to get one of the first visits with a new revolutionary leader for the Pilippines and get BC in on the ground floor of its new administration as potential trade partners for reconstruction of the country with its first left of centre socialist President that promises to end corruption and invest in its infrastructure and people.
Time will tell.
I am out of town this week or I would write more.
150 million people in that country that all speak English as their official language is no small potential market … If they every have the success China had in modernizing for example. Manila alone is one of the largest cities in the world with over 30 million residents.
Islands like Luzan or Mindinao have the population of Canada and chronic energy shortages? The primary fuel is imported coal and charcoal from burning down rain forests. The idea of having LNG infrastructure to supply islands like Mindinao or the Visias would be game changing in that part of the world and could very well save a rain forest in a the process.
hahaha:-“Socredible, even if it was voluntary, I doubt any of you “balance the budget” types would volunteer to give up your medicare. The only way you types want the budget balanced is if the economic pain only applies to people other than yourselves.
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Your last sentence sounds very ‘socialistic’, doesn’t it? So you see there’s really no difference in Policy between those who presently see themselves on the right, and their left wing counterparts. The only thing those on the right are currently doing is delaying what those on the left have in store for us ~ because, until they get over that silly notion that ‘money’ is some kind of commodity that’s fixed and finite, and governed by the laws of nature, and that if someone has too much, someone else then must have too little, they can’t do anything else. A ‘balanced budget’ of a government simply means, under the current financial set-up, that some other sectors of the economy have a budget that is going to be unbalanced. Otherwise ‘growth’ would be impossible. And we need ‘growth’, if for no other reason than the population is continually growing. Someday, I hope, before we find out the hard way just what the left really has in store for us, those on the right might wake up and change the accounting to make it actually reflect the facts instead of continuing to misrepresent them.
There should be a mathematical model for monetary growth (to citizens) based on things like GDP and employment statistics and until someone figures that out we will have the bankers debt ponzi until it all collapses again and they gobble up even more control of the economy. Problem is that now they plug the monetary hole with more tax dollars for citizens to bail out bankers rather than having them too live by the rules of capitalism.
In Switzerland they recently implemented a minimum income scheme that shows some promise for a social credit based economy.
Christy Clark has nothing to do with the TPP negotiations in any event.
She needs to put pressure on the Federal Liberals to protect exports of lumber to the USA, Japan, and other Countries. If the Russians ever lift the embargo on logs to China, and the Americans don’t renew some sort of an agreement with Canada on the Softwood file, and the Japanese continue to restrict Canadian exports of lumber, this Province is in for a rough ride.
With all the jobs she is predicting you would think she would have had a job fair before she left because after all we must be ready.
Rich I told you to bring the brown envelopes, you can see right through these things.
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