OTTAWA (Reuters) – A friendly, $15.1 billion Chinese bid for a big Canadian energy company is in line with government pleas for foreign money to develop the costly tar sands of northern Alberta, a possible pointer to the eventual approval of the deal.

Ottawa said only that it would review state oil company CNOOC’s (0883.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) bid for Nexen Inc (NXY.TO: Quote, Profile, Research), based on its laws on foreign investment. But lawyers, analysts and insiders said there were good reasons for the deal to go ahead, and fewer reasons to block it.

OTTAWA, July 23 (Reuters) – A friendly, $15.1 billion
Chinese bid for a big Canadian energy company is in line with
government pleas for foreign money to develop the costly tar
sands of northern Alberta, a possible pointer to the eventual
approval of the deal.

Ottawa said only that it would review state oil company
CNOOC’s bid for Nexen Inc, based on its laws
on foreign investment. But lawyers, analysts and insiders said
there were good reasons for the deal to go ahead, and fewer
reasons to block it.

OTTAWA, July 19 (Reuters) – Canada will not be able to fully
benefit from huge resources of oil and natural gas unless the
energy industry improves its environmental record, a Senate
report concluded on Thursday.

The report, from the Energy Committee of the Senate, said
Canada should do more to persuade the world it was developing
its resources responsibly.

OTTAWA, July 16 (Reuters) – Foreign investment in Canadian
securities hit a record high in May on heavy buying of its
higher yielding government debt, a sign of Canada’s growing role
as a safe haven during global economic turmoil.

Canada, which boasts stronger fiscal and economic
fundamentals than most developed Western economies, said
non-residents bought C$26.11 billion ($25.60 billion) of stocks,
bonds and money market paper in May, well above the previous
C$22.88 billion record from May 2010.

OTTAWA, July 12 (Reuters) – Skilled U.S. workers are coming
to Canada in ever greater numbers, driven out by high
unemployment at home, and tempted in by job shortages in key
sectors like Alberta’s growing energy sector.

Government figures show that Canada issued 34,185 temporary
work permits to Americans last year, just shy of the record
35,060 handed out in 2010, and officials expect that number to
keep growing.

July 11 (Reuters) – There are growing signs that Quebec
Premier Jean Charest will call an early election despite polls
showing his ruling Liberals could lose to a separatist party
that seeks independence for the mostly French-speaking Canadian
province.

Montreal’s La Presse newspaper, citing what it said were
several Liberal insiders, said Charest strongly favored
launching the campaign on August 1. That would mean an election
on Sept. 4.

OTTAWA, July 11 (Reuters) – Canada’s trade deficit
unexpectedly rose in May, pushed up by record imports while
exporters struggled to make any progress in the face of the
European economic crisis.

The May deficit edged up to C$793 million ($777 million)
from C$623 million in April, Statistics Canada said on
Wednesday. Market analysts surveyed by Reuters had expected a
deficit of C$380 million.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Supreme Court of Canada wrestled with how easily an election can be overturned because of clerical errors on Tuesday in a case brought by a Liberal candidate who lost a federal election last year by 26 votes.

The court’s decision on the race in a Toronto district, between Conservative Ted Opitz and Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj, will not jeopardize the Conservative government’s hold on power, because it has a comfortable majority in Parliament.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Several hundred Canadian scientists and their supporters held an unprecedented protest march on Tuesday to demonstrate against the government’s decision to close down major facilities and fire research staff.

The protesters, who say the right-of-center Conservative government dislikes science, walked through central Ottawa behind a woman dressed as the Grim Reaper and a coffin designed to mourn the “Death of Evidence”.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council has behaved disgracefully over the Syria crisis and the United Nations as a whole is becoming irrelevant, Canada’s foreign minister said Friday in one of the country’s sharpest attacks on the world body.

Canada’s Conservative government, which is often critical of the United Nations, is angry that Russia in particular has prevented the Security Council from taking tougher action to help stop spreading violence in Syria.