The Root Word: ForestEthics Blog

Bravo my fellow Canadians! Your messages to Harper’s International Trade Committee MPs hit a nerve. Together with the Nexen uproar, Harper’s grand plan to put our natural resources and democratic laws on the Chinese corporate auction block is starting to crack. Wide open.

Despite his majority, Harper is vulnerable. And the Canada China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPA)—let’s just call it Harper’s Sell-out Treaty—is likely to face resistance within Conservative party ranks. Just like the Nexen deal.¹

We have less than one week to do whatever we can to expose and challenge FIPA. You’ve already spoken up to Parliament. Now, please sign our Open Letter to Harper. Let him know that our right, as Canadians, to make decisions that protect our natural resources and environment will not be held hostage to Chinese corporate profits.

I am demanding that this treaty be openly debated in public forums and in the House of Commons—and so should you. Harper’s attempts to quietly cede our sovereignty and constitutional rights to foreign corporate interests must be stopped.

Here’s my challenge to you: Help me get 30,000 signatures on our Open Letter to Harper in the next 72 hours. I promise to send that letter and your signatures to Harper on or before November 1st—the date he plans to sign this Treaty into law.

Sound impossible? Maybe it is. But the Canada I know and love is a Canada worth fighting for.

Join me. Sign our letter. Get your friends and family to sign our letter. Don’t let Harper betray all that Canada stands for: democracy, openness and a right to determine our own prosperous future.

Thank you!

Clayton Ruby, C.M.
Board Chair, ForestEthics Advocacy
B.A., LL.B, LL.M., LL.D. (honoris causa)

1) Reuters article: Analysis: Canada ruling Conservatives split over CNOOC's bid for Nexen