Panel data provided by Madison's Canadian Lumber Reporter.

Terasen Gas Deal: Playing chess with the Americans? Hell, we can’t even see the chessboard

By 250 News

- by Peter Ewart

Imagine a chess game with the stakes being who will control Canada’s oil and gas infrastructure, including such companies as Terasen Gas, which is currently based in British Columbia. On the one side, there are huge US monopolies, like Kinder-Morgan eager to get their hands on our resources. On the other side, the Canadian people, who quite rightly want sovereignty over these same resources.

But wait! This is an odd chess game. We, the Canadian people, are not actually sitting at the table; we can’t even see the whole chessboard. Instead, we have a political and corporate elite that is supposed to be playing on our behalf, yet is blocking our view. Time and time again, this is a chess game we lose. As a result, large chunks of British Columbia’s and Canada’s resources and industries are owned and controlled by foreign monopolies and multinationals.

Why? Because these same political and corporate leaders who are supposed to represent us, instead, build their careers and fortunes by time and time again throwing the game in favour of the other side and selling us out. And, furthermore, because the decision-making process that is in place excludes us from any serious participation.

For example, if Kinder Morgan takes over Terasen Gas, the CEO of Terasen stands to make as much as $13.7 million (Vancouver Sun, Sept. 24). Other members of the company executive and board of directors stand to profit significantly from the sale as well.

Kinder Morgan itself is ecstatic about the deal that is being thrown its way. CEO Richard Kinder chortles that it is “one hell of an opportunity” that will result in a “tsunami”in the energy field (an interesting choice of words given the havoc that tsunamis usually cause to a country). But, as Mary Lynn Young points out, the “Terasen deal has a lot of winners, but where’s B.C.?” (Globe & Mail, Sept. 23).

Well, where the people of BC are, is on the sidelines. The provincial Liberal government made sure of this by changing the legislation that required that only 20% of the company could be owned by foreigners and that the head office had to be in BC. Now, the company can be completely foreign-owned and, in the Kinder Morgan case, based in Houston, Texas. Of course, government leaders have been praising the deal up and down as it winds its way through the BC Utilities Commission approval process. In other words, not only has the provincial government given the green light for this foreign takeover, it is paving the road for it to happen. If the deal goes through, 850,000 residents and businesses in BC will be paying their gas bills to a US corporation. What self-respecting politician would allow such an anti-national deal to go ahead?

This kind of scenario has been repeated many times at both the provincial and federal levels to the point that Canada’s national sovereignty over energy and other resources has become severely compromised. The regulatory processes that are in place to review foreign takeovers are little more than rubberstamps that rarely, if ever, block a takeover. In fact, they act as a mask for the real “deal making” that takes place behind closed doors.

We know what the response has been at the provincial level to foreign takeovers by multinationals such as CN Rail and Kinder Morgan. But what has been the response at the Federal level to this serious erosion of our sovereignty? Canada’s Trade Minister, Jim Peterson, said recently that he “would not be surprised if people from around the world wanted access to our energy or saw our energy companies as very good investment” and that he “welcomes investments from abroad” (National Post, Aug. 12). In other words, come in and take over what you want of the country, and we will help you. And these are the federal representatives who are supposed to be playing chess on our behalf?

To play chess successfully, we, the Canadian people, must be the ones who decide which move to make, and we need to see the whole board. This means that we need to change the current system of representational democracy to a more direct democracy where the citizenry is empowered and where, as a fundamental right, we get to vote on whether a key utility like Terasen Gas can be sold to a foreign multinational.

It is not enough for opposition parties to shout that the solution to this Terasen Gas takeover is simply to get them elected and they will “represent” us better. We need commitments that the entire process will be changed. Canadians have never been allowed to vote on the foreign takeovers of CN Rail, BC Rail, Westcoast Energy and a host of other Canadian companies, let alone on fundamental issues of national sovereignty such as the Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA. It’s about time we took control of the process. Then we might start checkmating these American and other foreign monopolies who are bent on making us strangers in our own land.

Previous Story - Next Story



Return to Home