April 1, 2010Foreign ownership of companies of Canada has long been a controversial political issue in Canada. Concerns regarding foreign ownership generally regard ownership by individuals or companies based in the United States, though foreign ownership occurs from entities and individuals based in other countries as well.
Some estimates state that more than 50% of the petroleum and gas industry and more than 50% of all manufacturing in Canada is foreign-owned and foreign-controlled.
Of note is that Canada’s largest companies by value, and largest employers, tend to be foreign-owned in a way that is more typical of a developing nation than a G8 member.
The best example is the automotive sector, one of Canada’s most important industries. It is dominated by American, German, and Japanese giants. Although this situation is not unique to Canada in the global context, it is unique among G-8 nations, and many other relatively small nations also have national automotive companies such as South Korea’s Kia and Hyundai.
When Canadians go shopping are they buying at Canadian owned and operated companies or foreign owned and operated companies?
When Canadians make a purchase where is their hard earned money going?
More than likely the money is going out of the country. When Canadians shop and buy at major department stores throughout Canada their money is more than likely going to the United States.
The tax revenue the US government collects from that money goes to finance US wars abroad, US CIA covert operations like kidnapping, sabotage, political assassinations and torture of people opposed to the US foreign policies and wars of aggressions.
US tax dollars from Canadians purchases in Canada, from stores they thought were Canadian owned, is helping the US government finance their wars of aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's helping the US government build and stockpile more advanced and deadly weapons that will kill more civilians, mostly women and children, than foreign combat troops. All those who were opposed to the US attacking Iraq were actually supporting and financing the US unlawful attack against Iraq, by buying from US owned and operated department stores and companies in Canada.
If you had an informed choice where would you shop?
Would you support Canadian owned and operated businesses or US and foreign owned and operated businesses?
To help you be more informed the following is a list of companies, stores and businesses that are no longer Canadian. Many on this list, to this day, use misleading and false advertising to deceive Canadians into shopping and buying from them by implying that they are Canadian owned and operated, when they are not.
According to our Canadian legal system such misleading practices are illegal. The use of the name Canada or Canadian by any foreign country is illegal.
Foreign owned companies among
Canada’s current largest companies
* General Motors Canada, Canada’s largest automotive manufacturer, 60% owned by the US government
* Wal-Mart Canada, wholly owned by Wal-Mart of the US
* Toyota Canada Inc. owned by Japan’s Toyota
* Ford Motor Company of Canada, owned by the American Ford company
* Imperial Oil, controlled by ExxonMobil, which owns 69.8% of its stock.
* Chrysler Canada now owned by the Italian company, Fiat
* Shell Canada, owned by Royal Dutch Shell.
* British Petroleum Canada, owned by British Petroleum
* Mitsui and Company, part of the Japanese Mitsui empire
* Honda Canada Inc., owned by Honda of Japan
* Ultramar fuels, owned by US-based Valero
* Costco, whose Canadian operations are the 7th largest private company in Canada as of 2006, is entirely a US owned company ~ Kirkland Corporation
* Labatt Brewing Company purchased by Belgian brewer Interbrew in 1995
* Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada’s largest retailer, and North America’s oldest corporation (est. 1670), sold to U.S. investor Jerry Zucker in 2006.
* Zellers, “truly Canadian” identity is truly not Canadian as it is the mass merchandise retail division of the Hudson’s Bay Company
* ING Bank of Canada, the largest foreign bank in Canada, formed by the purchase of several small Canadian companies, controlled by the Dutch ING Group
* Sears Canada, one the largest retailers (created by buying old Simpson’s stores), is controlled by the US Sears Holdings Corporation
* IBM Canada, owned by IBM
* Safeway Canada supermarkets, owned by Safeway Inc.
* Cargill Ltd. owned by Cargill of Minnesota
* McDonald’s Canada, owned by McDonald’s
* Pratt & Whitney Canada owned by US United Technologies Corporation
* Nissan Canada, owned by Nissan Motors of Japan
* Parmalat Canada owned by Parmalat of Italy
* Keystone Automotive Industries, Inc. a leader in providing after market vehicle collision replacement parts was bought by Chicago based LKQ Corporation in 2007 for about $811 million, in cash.
Former major Canadian Companies
acquired by foreign owners
* MacMillan Bloedel, B.C. forestry giant acquired by Weyerhaeuser for US$2.45 billion in 1999
* JDS Fitel $8.9-billion merger with U-S.-based Uniphase to form JDS Uniphase, in 1999. Company headquarters move from Ottawa to San Jose.
* Eaton’s, at one time Canada’s largest retailer, with a history going back to 1869, purchased by Sears in 1999, and closed in 2000
* Seagram distillery and entertainment conglomerate, sold to Vivendi Universal and Pernod Ricard in 2000
* Corel, a software and programming company, taken over by Vector Capital in August 2003.
* PetroKazakhstan a Calgary-based company exploring in Central Asia (specifically formed to build the Trans-Afghan natural gas pipeline ~ the main reason why the US attacked Afghanistan), was purchased by the Chinese state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation in 2005
* CP Ships Ltd., acquired by the parent company of Hapag-Lloyd Container Line, TUI AG, in an all-cash transaction worth $2.3 billion US in 2005
* Stelco Steel ~ With sixty percent of Canada’s steel being produced in Hamilton by Stelco and Dofasco, Stelco was bought by U.S. Steel for $1.9 billion in 2007.
* Dofasco, Canada’s largest steel maker acquired by Luxembourg-based Arcelor, January 2006.
* Molson Brewries, (including Molson Canadian brand of beer) one of the oldest companies in Canada merged with US Coors, in 2005. “I am Canadian” beer is now I" am US" beer deceivingly marketed as Canadian
* Terasen Inc., previously BC Gas (a public utility company), sold to American-owned energy giant Kinder Morgan for $6.9 billion. The deal was approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission despite 8,000 letters of protest, 2005. Terasen was subsequently sold to Newfoundland-based Fortis Inc. in 2007.
* Canadian Pacific hotels the owner of many of Canada’s most historic hotel properties (operating under the name Fairmont Hotels and Resorts since 1999) sold to Colony Capital, LLC of California and Kingdom Holding Company of Saudi Arabia for $3.9 billion, in January 2006.
* Noranda (mining company) & Falconbridge Ltd., purchased by Swiss mining company Xstrata in 2006. Noranda had earlier been a target of state-owned China Metals Corp., but had backed out in 2005 amid public concern in Canada of Chinese state control of such a major company.
* ATI Technologies, Canada’s graphics chip maker, acquired by Advanced Micro Devices, July 2006.
* Alcan purchased by Rio Tinto in 2007.
* Addax Petroleum, one of Canada’s 9 fortune 2000 2009 oil and gas companies was acquired by sinopec of China for C$8.27 billion in June 2009 and approved by the Chinese government on August 12, 2009.
* Creo Inc., a world leader in digital printing software acquired by Eastman Kodak
* Zenon Environmental Inc., a successful and innovative technology company spawned in Hamilton ~ sold to General Electric Co.
* Tim Hortons, sold to US Wendy’s International in 1995, later to be sold to the public an IPO in 2005.
* CN Rail, the historic Canadian railway, now estimated to be 2/3 US owned.
* Gulf Canada Resources, which had formerly been part of US-based Gulf Oil, but had since become independent, was purchased by US-based Conoco in a deal worth $6.7 billion in 2002.
* Moore Wallace sold to U.S.-based R.R. Donnelley and Sons for $4.9 billion.
* Masonite, bought out by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
* ID Biomedical, Canadian vaccine maker acquired by Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline for $1.8 billion.
* Vincor International Ltd., Canada’s top wine maker and distributor, purchased for $1.4 billion by Constellation Brands Inc. of Fairport, NY, USA
* Bauer, Cooper, and Hespeler, historic hockey equipment manufacturers bought by Nike in 1994
* CCM (The Hockey Company), acquired by Reebok in 2004
* Alberta Oil Sands ~ Under the terms of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the US is guaranteed a percentage of Canada’s oil. (Canada currently produces 2.6 million bpd of oil and exports 1.6 million, or about 60 percent of it, to the US.) American investment controls between 40 and 50 percent of Alberta’s oil.
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