I saluted the flag many times during my 26 years of service in the Canadian Forces. I now practise condominium law and I can predict, with certainty, that Bill C-288 will cause a flap.Comstock
When it comes to foreign takeovers in Canada, the numbers have pretty much always told the same story.
Amid all the debate about strategic assets and hollowing out, more money flows out of Canada to buy assets abroad than flows in to buy assets here.
This country has increasingly built an economy on the ability to invest abroad, whether it be Canada Pension Plan Investment Board buying airports and toll roads around the globe to pay for Canadians' retirements or Brookfield Asset Management building office towers in New York. The tradeoff for that is allowing foreign capital in to Canadian assets.
The total value of foreign direct investments by Canadians in other countries stood at $684.5-billion, an increase from 2010 of $44.6-billion. Meantime, the value of foreign direct investment in Canada stood at $607.5-billion, up $22.4-billion from 2010. (The Statistics Canada breakdown is available here.)
Foreign takeovers in Canada get a lot of headlines. However, on a global basis, Canada has been declining as a target for foreign direct investment. According to the Conference Board of Canada, Canada garnered a 16 per cent share of all foreign direct investment flows in 1970. By 2009, the number stood at 3 per cent.
A 2010 study by the Institute for Research on Public Policy found that, measured against the size of the economy, "inward FDI is about the same as it was in 1970, but outward FDI is much higher. This means the cost of 'protecting' the Canadian economy by further restricting inward FDI is much higher than before in the sense that any retaliatory restrictions by other countries would have very large adverse effects on the growing stock of Canadian investment abroad."