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Canada Blocks Sale of Space Tech Company To US
Dave Knott writes "The Canadian federal government has blocked the $1.3-billion sale of the space technology division of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates to Alliant Techsystems, a major US defense contractor. Industry Minister Jim Prentice is quoted as saying he is 'not satisfied' the sale will be a net benefit for Canada. MDA is Canada's leading developer of space-based technology, including the famous CanadArm and the recently installed space station robot Dextre."
Suckers!
Now we have maple syrup, caribou, ice hockey AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY!!
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Is it not the comapnies choice?
Easy then, disband the company, start it up in America and then sell?
How is the sale of a Canadian company to US interests ever a net benefit for Canada? I've lost track of the companies that used to be Canadian owned, even a part of Canada's national identity (Tim Hortons), that have been sold off to make a penny.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Terrance & Philip must have called their Member of Parliament to complain and when the MP heard Philip say "Pass Gas", he thought he heard "Pass a Law" and outlawed the sale.
TDz.
This was the 'real' reason for lack of sale:
We at Canada have a policy of selling any weapons to rogue states. That is why when everyone was busy selling arms to states at war we Canada stayed at the fringes. Now, we believe the actions of the US government and its policies are detrimental to the democratic progress. We believe they could either lead to external aggression (most likely) and internal repression. Thus the Canadian government has decided not to sell the space technology to the United States.
P.S: US please dont take this seriously, we still love you, eh.
Except for the one valid complaint that the government had helped this company along with a lot of support, I don't think anybody's even pretending that this is a justified intervention in the free market. (Whether Canadians have ever bought a US company that previously received lots of US government grants, contracts and other support, would be interesting; I'd be surprised if it *hadn't* happened, though).
But alas, it was tin-eared in the extreme to announce this just as Dextre was being installed and everybody's nationalistic pride in the company was at a peak. We've been smiling with pride every time a shuttle image showed the flag and name on the CanadArm for 20 years or so; and Dextre, another order of magnitude more impressive a technology, had us all rubbing our hands with pride and glee.
Then the owners do their best to give everybody an image of them saying "Thanks for the free help, suckers! We're selling out and off to Brazil with your cash!" This result was then predictable.
If they'd waited a year or two, perhaps couched it in terms of allowing the company to go on to greater achievements through partnering, maybe tossed out a few promises of continued location in Canada and all Canadian jobs totally safe (promises you can always break a few years later, it's not like PR is legally binding), they could have gotten away with it.
Now, they can't wait a few years and try again because the issue's been raised and the media will hype it up again unless they wait at least 10 years. And this was, by the way, our *Conservative*, pro-business party. Any chance of a future Liberal government allowing this one is much dimmer still.
no doubt aboot it
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Would a rogue state has a cache of nuclear weapons at its disposal? Would they have a leader who acquired his mantle against the will of the people and assumes all power, all the while actual elected officials are powerless to stop? Do rogue states invade soverign countries for no particular reason and overthrow their government?
You show me a country with those qualifications and I'll show you a rogue state!
-1 flamebait, +2 insightful, +1 funny... take that mod!
We don't have companies in the US that can make these?
They're not our fwiends, buddy.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Please, my American neighbors to the south, don't be mistaken, this has nothing to do with patriotism, this is simply mock protectionism done to demonstrate the power of our leadership to the weak minded, poliically conservative, republican type, Canadians. You see, we have our own Bush and his name is Harper, and in my opinion, he just as much of a traitor as your leader is.
The truth is, the upperclass, and it's servants, have been selling out thier respective countries for years.
The issue is not with Dextre or the CanadArm. The issue is with Radarsat 2, which contains sensitive technology which is used by the Government of Canada to monitor and assert our claims of sovereignty over the Arctic.
Claims which the Government of the U.S. doesn't recognize. The fear is that if the technology and control of the tech is sold to a U.S. company, the U.S. government will be able to control what the Canadian Government sees - allowing, for instance, U.S. warships to use the Northwest Passage without informing the Government of Canada.
It has very little to do with nationalistic pride, and more to do with national security. Ask yourself, would the U.S. Government allow a company that developed and operates the spy-satelite network to be sold to a foreign power? It would never happen. Hell, you can't even export anything that uses encryption in the U.S. - which you can do in Canada.
As I understand it, MDA won the contract for developing the robotic arm (Canadarm) from NASA. That NASA bought arms as a consequence of that. But the technology for that has been under US control from the beginning. Radarsat is a different story. Canada developed that, and it is important for Canadian sovereignty. As the USA disputes Canada's sovereignty in the north, giving the USA the Radarsat technology doesn't make sense. Besides, how many USA companies think Canadian citizens are potential terrorists and won't hire us?
Harper is a little fascist cunt like Bush. It's nice to see SOME members of the government still have their balls.
Hope the Libs... Hell, I hope ANYONE but the PC's win the next election. Harper seems hellbent on making Canada into America 2.
Forget that this is precious high technology that can, and has had spin-offs in the past.
Forget that Canada produced the world's first digital telecommunications satellite. Forget all the jobs and knowledge that will gradually melt south of the border. forget it.
It's much more basic than that. There is a long-time border dispute with the americans, we think the waters between arctic islands are Canadian waters, the US claims they aren't. The Americans have nuclear submarines, we don't. Now with the ice melting, http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=8df15e06-e40d-42da-b42e-61c0d0713260
there is a navigable channel shaping up that could take weeks off the time to ship from asia to europe. and there's oil up there, http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2006/01/arctic-circle-canadas-not-kidding.html
too.
One of the main uses of RADARSAT for Canada is to replace aerial reconnaissance for Ice forecasting. they can, I imagine, spot submarines as well, since the Americans, supposedly our closest ally, refused to launch them. So they were launched on Russian vehicles.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071025164751AAOF6Ur
http://www.studentsonice.com/blog/?p=79
We like our arctic, it is ours. We'd like the tax revenue from any oil that is pumped out of there. we'd like the revenue from a major shipping lane, so declaring it international waters is a problem for us. We can't afford to build nuclear submarines...
So it would be pretty @#%$@^%@ stupid to sell this company to a US arms manufacturer, which is, at the very least, clearly beholden to the US government for contracting.
rbrander wrote: Except for the one valid complaint that the government had helped this company along with a lot of support, I don't think anybody's even pretending that this is a justified intervention in the free market.
It's far more likely they're concerned with what the said they were concerned about, the Radarsat-2. The Globe and Mail business section said today In mid-March, the tide turned, and questions about whether U.S. security laws would give that country control of satellite data about Canada's Far North raised the spectre it might be used against Canada's contested claims in the Arctic. That image conflicted with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's high-profile vow to protect Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, and made it a key political plank.
It makes little sense to sell your only far-north tracking satelite to a country that you're arguing with about far north sovereignty. Espcially after paying real money to the Russians to put it up!
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Extraction wasn't economical for a long while, but with the high price of oil lately, it has become extremely economical. There's such an economic boom going on that high school boys are dropping out of school to drive trucks in the oil fields.
You might claim I'm trolling, but I'm not. I'm absolutely serious.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I call b.s. This isn't just a publicity problem, this is a real-politik problem.
This is about arctic sovereignty and billions in future tax revenue. This isn't a political issue. No political party has ever turned down the prospect of future tax base.
RADARSAT II, which the americans pointedly refused to launch, is what we use to patrol our artic waters. Giving the Americans, the keys, the plans, and the ability to just delay things to death is beyond stupid from a strategic perspective.
Canadians fear the U.S.? I know we go to war a lot, but I wouldn't think Canadians would be worried aboot that. We make jokes, but we do like you guys.
Why?
Why does Canada need to maintain sovereignty over a private company, in an era of free trade? Why not let the owners cash their chips in?
The US doesn't block this kind of thing on sovereignty grounds -- although to be fair it may be because the current administration doesn't understand that US sovereignty has any geographic limits...
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The intervention is entirely justified under the Investment Canada Act of 1985. It considers whether any such sale would have a net benefit to Canada, taking into account several factors: ... and even Canada's cultural policies. Evidently the Minister found the sale would not bring a net benefit considering these factors, and blocked the sale. It's perfectly legitimate and all such sales go through the same process.
-Economic benefits including employment
-Canadian participation in the industry
-Effects on Canadian industry
-Effects on Canadian competitors to the company
-Canada's ability to compete in world markets
... in the time from when the deal would be signed to the money being in the bank, the value would have halved.
US$ = Useless third world currency
There is a bunch more to this, which never seems to make the press coverage. Radarsat2 was originally to have been a US-Canada partnership. But then the US realized that it would provide the kind of coverage of the US that the US now has of other countries - something it decided was unacceptable. The US withdrew, refused to supply some key components, and refused to provide the launch. The satellite was redesigned to use alternate components, and launched on a European rocket. So now the US is trying an alternate approach to recovering control of the situation.
They get to take another kick at selling out in 30 days, when they report back to the Minister. If the press hadn't got hold of this, it would already be a done deal.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
On a more important note (it IS Saturday), what is the largest Canadian-owned brewery right now?
Moosehead.
I don't have much of a point here, really (and Moosehead is a decent enough beer).
I certainly don't give a damn about Molson and Labatt.
I just thought it was a shame when Sleeman's was bought out by Sapporo -- only because they took Unibroue with them.
I wish the government had stepped in then to block that sale (I'm only kidding. Unibroue is doing quite well under their new ownership).
If you want to develop space-related technologies, don't take grant money from the government of Canada. Your government won't respect your property rights, and will intervene if you try to reap the rewards of building a valuable business.
Just because US/Canadian interests have coincided for many, many years doesn't mean the will always coincide, and I wouldn't want Canadians blindly trusting in the goodwill of the United States any more than I'd want the US to trust the national defense interests of Canada. Nations do not have friends and nations do not "like." If nothing else, it introduces a whole other country outside of your control that's privy to things you don't advertise. That's something that should always be approached warily.
The intervention is entirely justified under the Investment Canada Act of 1985
It seems that you are unable to distinguish between legality and justification.
This intervention is a theft from the shareholders of the company in question.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Thanks, we canadians don't support unchecked free market, it would just leave us raped by large corporations in health care like the good people of the US.
Selling of tax payer funded military and technology knowledge for petty cash to the US, who may then use it to invade states under false pretenses doesn't seem like a patriotic thing to do.
My favourite line from the show MASH was when Hawkeye announced he was a 'reformed druid'... "I worship bushes." I don't know how it slipped past the censors of the day.... probably too sly for their narrow imagination. :D I laughed my ass off.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Canada has most of the freshwater and oil in North America. It neighbours the largest military power in the world who also happens to have an "interventionist" foreign policy.
Fear is not quite the right word...
national security against the US? I think you're forgetting that the US is our (Canadian) national security and by pissing them off we're actually creating a more insecure Canada. this is Canadian jingoism interleaved with ignorance. I think with our 90 or so functioning aircraft fighters we could probably defend against an attack from Denmark...
The construction of Radarsat II was mostly funded by Canadian taxpayers through the Canadian Space Agency and gifted to MDA. The financial details are given at http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/resources/publications/rpp-2008-annexes.asp. It is not chump change we are talking about: $421.6M (expected).
MDA is the 800 lb gorilla in the Canadian space industry. In addition to building the Radarsats, Canadarm and Dextre, MDA also built the MET station and lidar (laser radar) system that is on the Phoenix Mars Scout which will land on Mars this May 25. Losing MDA would be akin to the US losing Lockheed Martin. It could quite possibly destabilize the whole Canadian space industry, and so the Government was right to intervene.
Of course, there are reasons why a sale was made in the first place. The Canadian Space Agency's budget has been stagnant for years, and this has had a big impact on MDA. Hopefully the Government steps up and reinvests in Canada's space industry again given that they prevented the sale alternative.
Of course not, since the U.S. gets to define "rogue state". nor danger to the democratic process.
Ha ha ha.
- In 1952, the U.S. supported Fulgencio Batista's coup against the democratically elected Cuban government of Carlos Prio.
- In 1953, the U.S. directly overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran (CIA Operation Ajax).
- In 2002, the U.S. supported a coup against the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez.
- The U.S. is still upholding a brutal dictatorship in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
"No danger to the democratic process?" My ass!Absolutely. The U.S. disputes Canadian sovereingty in the high arctic. The U.S. also disputes Canadian sovereignty over national resources like oil and softwood lumber. Taking our raw resources without letting us cut trees into lumber or refine the oil ourselves (and the associated jobs) is not a good indication the U.S. 'likes you guys' as much as they 'like your resources'. Heck, you even want Canadian freshwater for frig's sake. Open up NAFTA. Go ahead. See what happens when you actually have to bid on that oil. Remember AVRO? Of course you don't. So here's the fear: a U.S. company gets ownership of Radarsat2, and the U.S. government prevents them from selling real-time images of the high north that show U.S. boats navigating the northwest passage or otherwise violating what Canada considers to be sovereign territory (territory, by the way, that the US also considered to Canadian-sovereign until the probability of large oil and other reserves became evident). Countries don't have friends, as we are so often told by your diplomats, they have interests. Selling Radarsat-2 is clearly not in our interest. Also, selling a finished, successfully launched and proven technology paid for by Canadian taxpayers in a finished form that is literally just coming online (and about to pay dividends) makes no sense at all.
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
Since it was clear from the outset this was a publicly funded project with national security implications, I think you'll have a hard time showing it to be 'illegal' (By the way, which laws are we talking about? Canadian Federal law?) -- especially since the funds probably came with an express statement to this effect.
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
I would think Canadians would be much more worried about the sale of all there metals companies such as Inco to Vale and Alcan than this. I mean it doesn't bother Canadians that half there Metals mining industry is now foreign owned? An American company's ownership would be beneficial. Canadian's only practice Nafta when it benefits them and try to bend it when it doesn't such as the timber tarrifs. Canadians should realize that the North American market benefits as a whole with stronger North American companies and should consider North America not just Canada.
Canada has supplanted the Soviet Union as the U.S. main rival in the space race. This calls for drastic measures. We may have the space shuttle, but we'll never catch up in Kraft dinner technology.
What this means is by 'government wants to encourage growth' you obviously mean 'government willing to buy and/or subsidize these companies' products'. Hey, wait, this is what the Canadian government has done!
Realistically, as has been said, if Boeing or LM were on the market, they would have been blocked. Instead, when American domestic companies associated with such high security projects are in trouble, the buyer is often forced to be another domestic manufacturer. This is really no different. While some might complain about sales like IBM's computer hardware division to Lenovo, in reality this is not comparable, and in any case the job loss from such an event is minute considering that such manufacturing already took place in Lenovo's home country.
It's also fairly ironic for anyone to complain that the United States is no threat to Canada. If the US gov't itself took that view, it would share much more of its technological secrets with not only Canada, but its other allies. For example, it took the UK being on the verge of bowing out of the JSF program for the US to provide the technolgoy necessary for them to correctly integrate that fighter with their own forces (mostly related to the computer code of the JSF, which the UK was originally not allowed to even know, let alone reprogram).
In short, not only is the blocking of the sale smart technologically and economically for Canadian industry and workers, but it is also smart security wise. The US has shown that it does not trust her allies on seemingly small things like this, so extending that same trust seems illogical to me.
I like to kill your couch. HE DIED HARD! MOO.
Yeah right. It's the same issue. Canadians think American's are bad even though were there closest neighbor. It must not bother Canadians that much when Alcan and Inco are swallowed by a non American company and Falconbridge is bought by Xstrata or Dofasco is bought by Arcelor. I mean which would you prefer? Your closest partner buying a company or someone else. Funny how they should complain about this buy out when there letting all Canadian companies get sold. It's really pathetic when you distrust your closest trading partner.
And the close to 500 million dollars given to the company to build Radarsat-2, and the almost immediate sale to a foreign interest, was a theft of taxpayers money.
Once you take money like that, your shareholders rightly lose some of those rights.
Really you're missing a few things since the US would block sale of just about every sensitive entity in the US to any other nation to make sure it continues to maintain control of it's satellites which is the main issue here.
Canada's gone through this before with the Avro Arrow anyway, and is learning hard from the past exactly what happens on top of it.
If people want to emigrate so be it, on the other side if you do develop something in your home nation and the government pitches in large sums of money and you want to sell to another nation you should expect that they're going to block you especially if they're going to lose control of a satellite/aircraft/other piece of sensitive technology that's used to watch over their territory.
Om, nomnomnom...
Take note, American entrepreneurs: If you have the wrong last name, wrong ancestry, or wrong interests, your government won't respect your right to habius corpus or the pursuit of happiness.
This was purposely left out. Back in 1982, when the constitution was repatriated, it was proposed to put the "right to private property", but it was not done to insure that a croporation could NEVER use the courts to get a person's property.
Now, you yankees can boast all you want about property rights, with the eminent domain supreme court decision (a government can expropriate a person to sell his land to a corporation that would pay more taxes), you look like a bunch of hypocrites.
And not having property rights in the constitution has the added advantage that you can block transactions that could have an adverse strategic effect, instead of blindingly let the "property rights" of a huge croporation rape everyone and their dog like it's done in the US.
You're absolutely right, consistency is marvelous!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080200404.html
So all American Oil companies should move North!
Great! There's lots of Free office space in
Montreal freed by lumber companies that have
trouble selling into the US market... something
about 50% tarriffs... Free market RULES!
Hey the US is pretty over-extended right now, maybe Canada should just invade...half the states would probably surrender just for free health care...
You have got to be kidding me. The British have a long history of hating the French; the Americans seem to think that even speaking the language a mark against a candidate for president. But Canadians? Meh. Rude jokes about French manliness, courage, etc. don't fly here they way they do in other English-speaking countries. We don't care a whole lot about France one way or the other. (That includes many Quebecois, who know that a sizable proportion of French are snobs who see the Quebecois as as country bumpkins with, as one such snob once told me, "un accent paysanne".) Dealings with America can be politically explosive. Dealings with France, not so much. Sure there's the "divorce Quebec" contingent, largely in the West - but most are clever enough to know the difference between Quebec and France, and we are oriented towards Asia anyway, not Europe or France.
Nowhere in the Canadian Constitution nor Charter of Rights you will find the "right to private property".
Governments don't grant rights, we institute governments to secure our rights. If the Canadian government fails to do so, then the Canadian people should overthrow it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Canadian softwood is hardly a free market, in spite of how the press (on both sides of the border) has attempted to play it that way.
John
What a sense of entitlement!
Corporations are legal creations of their jurisdictions. They both benefit and suffer under those rules, as do we all. MDA and its investors profit from the rules of business in Canada, they profit from the protection afforded by the state, and they profit from the funding they've won from the government.
However, corporations and investors should have exactly as much right to loss as they do to profit. The rules of the game are (or should be) known to all.
Anyone who put money in to MDA without understanding that the national security role of some of their assets and operations impaired the value of those assets by restricting their potential market, made an investing mistake and should shut up and live with it.
All I hear in your post is the kind of selfish person who wants to change the rules of the game when they are ahead.
Grow a pair of testicles and stop whining. And stop trying to pretend that you adhere to some "free market principles" when what you probably want is a rigged game that guarantees your profits.
I just hope that the "if" you are talking about will not be judged by US government(with US media included) but by Canadian people independently.
We don't need that kind of nonsense: we're the redcoats!!!
Other countries typically haven't screwed us over like our alleged closest friend. What's truly pathetic is that the US brought this distrust upon themselves.
-jcr Assuming you're American (I shouldn't, but for sake of argument...) the current US administration has been destroying your rights under your God-almighty constitution and Bill of Rights for the last six or seven years.
We'll think about removing our government outside of democratic elections only after the US population shows the guts to use that second amendment of yours as it was intended, and do the same to your government first.
It's not even a real country anyway.
Hey duck ... nobody cares about Canada. Trust me, nobody does.
If people hear of Canada it is because its location , to the north of US.
SO give it up, your litlle crusade against US makes no difference, for the majority of the world you just don't exists.
It's all pretty silly. This is being driven by the kind of nationalists up here who feel comfortable believing their economy is owned by Canadian millionaires rather than American millionaires. If we actually had an independent foreign policy then this might be significant.
Probably the same way Pussy Galore (from Goldfinder) made it past them.
Take those word back or we'll send Celine Dion back to the US for good.
I highly doubt the PCs could win the next election, since they don't even exist as a federal party anymore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Conservative_Party_of_Canada
Oh please. I am so sick of hearing about how the US defends Canada. Exactly when has the US ever risen to the defense of Canada? We prosper because of our foreign policies not because of their military.
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't take the sky from me...
462 million dollars is to 'grant money' as a PTC III crane is to a Tonka mighty crane.
I think disallowing a few wealthy shareholders from profiteering from the enormous governmental support the company has received is a small price to pay for retaining cutting-edge technology in our national portfolio without giving a veto on how we might use said technology to other nations.
I couldn't agree less with your assessment. I'm not from B.C. (which has more than its share of prejudice against Quebec). I'm originally from a small English town in Quebec. I was there when Bill 101 was passed. I was there for the first referendum. Separation would destroy my country (not my nation - I don't want Canada to be a nation), and would not be in the interest of the people of Quebec. Nonetheless, I support the right - affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada - to separate. It would be wrong as well as futile to thwart the democratic choice of a clear majority of Quebecers. Despite the bombastic rhetoric of a few Canadians, I'm sure the vast majority outside Quebec would agree with me. But it's pretty clear that people like you (who have here refused to even recognize a distinction between the people of France and the people of Quebec) won't listen to what people like me have to say. There's no use accusing me - because in the end the people of Quebec will have to work out their destiny among themselves.
Quebecers are not the only ones who suffer the failures of the federal government. The political and governance structures of this country are collapsing and being dismantled. We call ourselves a "democracy", but that is generous. Separation will not happen tomorrow, nor is separatist sentiment about to go away. In the mean time, it is our duty and our interest to repair and revitalize what democracy we have.