Suckers.

A Nov 22, 2024, CBC News article,"'We got completely played for suckers,' MP says of recent takeovers in Canadian forestry," misses the point entirely.

Canada under no circumstances should be selling its patrimony to foreign corporations.

The reason these sales were made to foreigners in the first place, namely "revitalization and jobs in some economically hard-hit communities," reflects the laser focus of Canada's finance sector on plundering Canada's housing sector and abhorrence for investing in Canadian industry to strengthen Canada's economy.

The entire predatory apparatus of primary and secondary mortgage markets, REITs, house, condo, and apartment building aggregators, hedge funds, and pension funds are worse than useless as they extract and concentrate wealth and are loathe to invest in actually creating it.

Ottawa should have nationalized these troubled paper manufacturers and incentivized housing sector predators with carrots and sticks to revitalize these operations. Instead, it spent "hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and provincial loans and subsidies" and wound up with millions of acres of Canadian forests in foreign hands.

Ottawa sold its seed corn, in other words.

This story is an object lesson in the utter failure of Canada's finance sector to do anything of value to Canada's economy as it plunders it instead, aggressively drives up the cost of living, and as a consequence drives down the competitiveness of Canadian labour and Canadian industry.