Canada's foreign investment laws to be tightened

In BHP Billiton (BHP Billiton) bid for Canadian potash (PotashCorp) trigger political turmoil, and Canada plans to tighten foreign investment laws, in order to force the investors to enhance transparency and accountability of the outside of their ability.

Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement (Tony Clement) on the British "Financial Times" said that the review process transactions with BHP Billiton is no specific contact. Government of Canada announced last week, BHP Billiton merger failed to "Investment Canada Act" (Investment Canada Act) requirements, to Canada to bring the "net benefit", this basically means the deal ran aground.

Clement said: "The prime minister and I both feel BHP Billiton merger review process works well," but he acknowledged that "there are some ideas worthy of attention now."

In particular, he said the government will require foreign investors to open their jobs, local processing, technology transfer, competition, and other usually "net benefit" test to make the commitment.

This review process applies only to the acquisition target enterprise value of the assets over 299 million Canadian dollars (2.99 billion) deal. But if potential buyers from non-World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries, a lower threshold for the review process.