What Is It That We Need China For Anyway?

 We don't need it but the Canadian plutocracy does:

The Department of Public Works paid $8,625,000 to Deloitte Inc. to manage shipments of pandemic supplies from China, according to records. Staff in a Memorandum To The Minister said they had no choice due to “extreme urgency”.

Bullsh--.

Canada needed those supplies. It still does.

But when Justin's bosses demand ...

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Canada’s consulate in Shanghai took Canadian companies to tech giant ByteDance’s offices this week, the company behind the controversial app TikTok and its Chinese equivalent.

An invitation went out for the event recently, with Canadian companies offered the chance to visit ByteDance’s Shanghai offices. The company developed TikTok, a social media app where users can create and share short videos, but there have been privacy concerns about the company’s products.

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The secrecy shrouding the much-delayed Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China makes it hard for experts, let alone average Canadians, to figure out what benefits this country will see from the deal. ...

Critics of the agreement, such as Gus Van Harten, an Osgoode Hall law professor who has written two books on investment treaties, raise several key objections:

• Canadian governments are locked in for a generation. If Canada finds the deal unsatisfactory, it cannot be cancelled completely for 31 years.
• China benefits much more than Canada, because of a clause allowing existing restrictions in each country to stay in place. Chinese companies get to play on a relatively level field in Canada, while maintaining wildly arbitrary practices and rules for Canadian companies in China.
• Chinese companies will be able to seek redress against any laws passed by any level of government in Canada which threaten their profits. Australia has decided not to enter FIPA agreements specifically because they allow powerful corporations to challenge legislation on social, environmental and economic issues. Chinese companies investing heavily in Canadian energy will be able seek billions in compensation if their projects are hampered by provincial laws on issues such as environmental concerns or First Nations rights, for example.
• Cases will be decided by a panel of professional arbitrators, and may be kept secret at the discretion of the sued party. This extraordinary provision reflects an aversion to transparency and public debate common to the Harper cabinet and the Chinese politburo.
• Differences between FIPA and the North American Free Trade Agreement may offer intriguing loopholes for American lawyers to argue for equal treatment under the principle of Most Favoured Nation.

 

Thanks, Steve. 

This is the country that owns us now:

Two patients in China that recovered from COVID-19 months ago tested positive for the coronavirus again, raising concern of the virus’s ability to linger and reactivate in people who it previously infected.

A 68-year-old woman in the central Chinese province of Hubei, where the novel coronavirus first surfaced in December, tested positive on Sunday, six months after she was diagnosed with COVID-19 and recovered. Another man found to have contracted the disease in April after returning from abroad tested positive in Shanghai on Monday but hasn’t shown any symptoms.

(Sidebar: it's a good thing that these people can fly into the country any time they want.)

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Two cities in China have found traces of the new coronavirus in imported frozen food and on food packaging, local authorities said on Thursday, raising fears that contaminated food shipments might cause new outbreaks.

A sample taken from the surface of frozen chicken wings imported into the southern city of Shenzhen from Brazil, as well as samples of outer packaging of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp sold in the northwestern Xi’An city, have tested positive for the virus, local authorities said on Thursday.

I'll just leave this right here:

Canadian inspectors intercepted nearly 900 food products from China over concerns about faulty labels, unmentioned allergens and harmful contaminants that included glass and metal between 2017 and early 2019, according to internal federal records.

The document provides an inside look at imports from China that caught the attention of officials for appearing to fall short of Canadian standards — from gum balls with "extraneous" metal, to three-minute chow mein that contained an insect, to spicy octopus flagged for a "non-specific hazard."

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Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou say evidence used by the United States for the Huawei executive’s extradition is “unreliable and defective” and should not be considered by a Canadian court.

Documents released Friday ahead of a hearing scheduled for September include evidence that Meng’s lawyers argue proves the U.S. left out key facts about communication with HSBC about Huawei’s operations in Iran when requesting Meng’s extradition from Canada to stand trial for fraud charges.

Yes, about that:

An HSBC banker concluded that Huawei's business dealings in Iran were "above board" after a meeting with company CFO Meng Wanzhou, whose representations turned out to be "deceitful" and put the bank at risk, a Canadian government lawyer said in court submissions released on Friday.

Compare this b!#ch to this fellow:

His arrest Monday morning at his home was the highest-profile detention under a new national security law that took effect in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory on June 30. He has not been charged but was held for 36 hours on suspicion of colluding with a foreign country or entity. He was released on bail.

Lai, 71, said he was worried he could be sent to the mainland, where the legal system has fewer protections. His fears were allayed when he realized that the officers were not speaking in Mandarin, the mainland Chinese language.

“I kind of settled down a little bit because? I knew that I wouldn’t be sent to China at least,” he said.

Canada wouldn't hesitate to send Jimmy Lai back if China had asked.