TRENDING FOODS

Trending Foods examines the latest news, market trends, surveys and stats that are helping shape the food industry. 

Courting the Specialty Foods Customer

Judie Bizzozero

September 26, 2014 - Blog

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U.S. consumers spend approximately $760 billion food and beverages each year, so understanding your target market is critical to any new product launch. This means food and beverage marketers have to know what consumers want, whether it be organic, sustainable, nutritious or indulgent.

Just look at the organic industry—what began as a niche industry a decade ago, accounted for more than $32 billion in retail sales in 2013. The same can be said for the specialty foods sector that has experienced a rebound as the economy picked up and consumers are willing to spend a little extra money on something indulgent.

According to the “Today’s Specialty Food Consumer Report 2014" from the Specialty Food Association and Mintel International, the specialty foods sector is thriving, experiencing nearly an 8-percent jump in annual sales over last year. In 2014, 145 million people—59 percent of U.S. consumers—purchased specialty foods.

Consumer engagement in specialty foods is broad. Overall, specialty food shoppers are spending 1 in 4 of their food dollars on specialty food, up from 1 in 5 in 2013. At least 1 in 5 specialty food consumers have recently purchased products in each of the total 34 specialty food categories included in the 2014 survey.

Core specialty food consumers are ages 18 to 44 years, earning more than $75,000 annually. Of those consumers, 42 percent said they try new foods in order to eat healthier; 71 percent support companies that practice sustainability; and women are more likely than men to purchase specialty food products. Younger adults report spending more on specialty food than baby boomers and those older, and older consumers buy specialty foods more for everyday cooking at home versus snacking.

Chocolate, olive oil and other specialty oils, and cheese remain the top three categories purchased, with more than half of specialty food consumers buying these products. Tea is a new entrant to the top 10 categories purchased this year, up from No. 15 in 2013.

According to the survey, supermarkets remain the prime location for specialty food consumers to buy specialty foods, largely due to convenience. About one-third of consumers frequent natural food stores and mass merchandisers, while one-quarter of specialty food consumers shop at farmers markets and specialty stores.

“Overall, specialty food consumers have these foods and beverages on hand for regular usage, whether as an everyday snack or meal or as a treat," said Denise Purcell, senior director, content development for the Specialty Food Association. “This daily engagement bodes well for the market as a whole."

The top 10 categories for specialty food sales include chocolate, olive oil/other specialty oils, cheese, coffee, salty snacks, frozen desserts/ice cream, meat/poultry/seafood, non-alcoholic beverages, bread/baked goods and tea. Food and beverage makers have a tremendous opportunity to grow the specialty foods sector with creative new product launches targeting the right demographic. What's more, retailers have a tremendous opportunity to promote specialty food products in a creative and eye-catching manner to attract more consumer interest.

THE FOOD LAW BLOGGER

The Food Law Blogger explores food litigation, including cases involving foodborne illness and labeling disputes, as well as key regulatory developments at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture. Ping Josh Long with story ideas at jlong@vpico.com.

Consumer Group Seeks to Eviscerate New USDA Poultry Inspection System

Josh Longhttp://www.foodproductdesign.com/Blogs/Food-Law-Blogger/2014/09/Consumer-Group-Seeks-to-Eviscerate-New-USDA-Poult.aspx

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A consumer rights group wants a federal court to vacate a new poultry inspection system adopted by an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The regulations, finalized this summer by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and taking effect on Oct. 20, would give chicken and turkey slaughterhouses the green light to “dramatically increase their slaughter line speeds, while threatening public health and introducing unwholesome poultry into interstate commerce," Food & Water Watch contends in the lawsuit.

The new inspection system violates the Poultry Products Inspection Act because it eliminates mandatory inspection requirements and the regulations were finalized before the opportunity for public comment, according to the suit, which was filed on Sept. 11 in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit also contends the regulations are arbitrary and capricious.

FSIS did not immediately respond on Thursday, Sept. 19, to a request for comment.

On July 31, the food-safety agency announced a new poultry inspection system that it said imposes new requirements to control Salmonella and Campylobacter and would prevent up to 5,000 foodborne illnesses annually. Under the inspection system, poultry companies will review carcasses for defects, a move FSIS said will free up its inspectors to focus on food-safety examinations.

The poultry industry expressed support for the new inspection system before the regulations were finalized. Rather than being confined to examining the dead birds for physical defects such as bumps and bruises, FSIS inspectors will have flexibility to search for causes of foodborne illnesses such as Salmonella, said Keith Williams, vice president of communications and marketing with the National Turkey Federation, in a phone interview earlier this year. According to a powerpoint presentation from FSIS, such sorting activities largely relate to the marketability of the carcasses rather than food safety.

Consumer and labor groups argued the proposal would compromise food safety and exacerbate the burden on inspectors who already suffer carpel tunnel syndrome and other ailments. Responding to public comments on its proposal, FSIS said the finalized regulations would cap at 140 birds per minute maximum line speeds, remaining consistent with current programs. FSIS had proposed increasing the number of inspections to 175 chickens per minute with one FSIS inspector on the line and one FSIS inspector off the line.

Before FSIS adopted the new regulations, government inspectors examined every carcass, according to Food & Water Watch. The lawsuit estimates the new system will lead to a reduction of as many as 770 federal inspectors.
“USDA’s new system will harm consumers and reverse 100 years of effective government regulation of the meat industry," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, in a statement. “It’s essentially a return to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. It’s a huge step backwards for our food safety system."

But USDA said it has learned a great deal about managing pathogens such as Salmonella since it began inspecting poultry more than a half century ago, requiring a more modern approach. FSIS has refuted criticism that fewer inspectors will compromise food safety, citing data from a pilot program showing “greater compliance with sanitation and HACCP regulations, carcasses with lower levels of visible fecal contamination, and equivalent or lower levels ofSalmonella contamination."

“These positive results were able to be achieved with fewer inspectors overall, but more inspectors deployed to more meaningful food safety-based activities," FSIS said in a Q&A on “Poultry Slaughter Modernization."

Under the new system, all poultry facilities must conduct microbiological testing at two points in their production process to demonstrate that they are controlling two common pathogens, Salmonella and Campylobacter. FSIS said it is the first time such requirements have been imposed.

FOOD PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: Effectively Incorporating Color Rachel Adams

FORMULATING FOODS

Formulating Foods explores the latest health and nutrition news and research—as well as the latest ingredient and food application innovations—to determine what consumers want (and need) from the food and beverage products they consume, and how industry can make it happen. 

Effectively Incorporating Color

Rachel Adams

September 17, 2014 - Blog

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How a food looks can be a major deciding factor as to whether a consumer will try the product. In order to increase visual appeal, food and beverage designers turn to a toolbox of colors options—synthetic or natural—to keep foods looking fresh and appetizing.

In today’s clean-label word, consumers are increasingly seeking products free from artificial colors and dyes, causing a shift away from FD&C-certified colors toward more “natural" alternatives. In terms of revenues, the global market for natural colors was estimated to be worth approximately $732.1 million in 2011 and is expected to reach $1.3 billion by 2017, according to the MarketsandMarkets report, “Food Colors Market by Type, Application & Geography—Global Trends & Forecast to 2019."

Food is the largest application segment for natural colorants with more than 32 percent market share, followed by soft drinks and alcoholic beverages. The market for natural colors is likely to become competitive as manufacturers have begun using natural colors in many products.

Of course, the “natural" landscape can be challenging to navigate, as FDA does not define colors as natural or artificial. In fact, FDA considers any product with added color—with the exception of those that receive the color from the food itself—to be artificially colored.

From a consumer perspective, the color’s natural-versus-artificial status is often determined the ingredient’s labeling. Colors derived from carotenoids or anthocyanins, for example, often carry names representing their fruit, vegetable or spice origins. Other colors considered “natural" include Spirulina extract, caramel colors, carmine and cochineal extract.

Natural colorants, like synthetics, can present challenges during formulation. Careful consideration of the application, processing parameters, intended shelf life, and other considerations, can ensure the colors will perform as intended.
For example, in bakery applications, high temperature or extreme pH can have negative effects on color ingredients—whether natural or synthetic. Understanding where the color will be added during processing along with what other conditions the color will be exposed to is critical when adding colors to baked goods.

Coloring beverages, on the other hand, will present a different set of challenges. Ingredients interaction, shelf life, packaging and storage conditions must all be considered when selecting colors for beverages.

For a closer look at colors—including how to effectively formulate with both naturals and synthetics in bakery, dairy, beverages and fortified foods—download the free Digital Issue, “Colors Formulation Strategies," from Food Product Design.

The world’s most dangerous flavour: How bitter is making a comeback

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH

The Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Sep. 16 2014, 5:29 PM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 17 2014, 12:00 AM EDT

Astringent and even slightly medicinal, bitter has a bit of a bad rap.

But as Chris Nuttall-Smith discovers while prepping a particularly complex and tart meal with cookbook author Jennifer McLagan, that’s undeserved – in fact, it’s perhaps the most sophisticated of tastes

Jennifer McLagan’s Campari Granita

Campari and orange juice is an excellent aperitif, and a good introduction to bitter. The same combination, though in different proportions to the cocktail, can be frozen into a granita. The advantage of this kind of ice is that you don’t need any fancy machines; you simply need to stir the mixture during the freezing process to break up the ice crystals. The result is a granular ice. If you prefer more bitterness, try the grapefruit variation below.

Serves 4 to 6.

• 1 cup strained freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1/2 cup Campari
• 1⁄2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Stir the orange juice, Campari, and lemon juice together, then pour into an 8-inch square metal pan. Place in the freezer. Stir the mixture with a spoon every hour or so, to break it up into large ice crystals. If you forget to stir the mixture and it freezes solid, don’t panic. To return the granita it to its granular texture, break it into chunks and pulse briefly in the food processor. To serve, spoon the granita into chilled glasses.

Variation: Replace the orange juice with freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and add 2 tablespoons superfine (caster) sugar.

Cookbook author Jennifer McLagan enjoys a homemade cocktail in her kitchen in Toronto. (Photos by Kevin Van Paassen for The Globe and Mail)

At 9:40 a.m. one recent Monday, Jennifer McLagan handed me a shot glass and a bottle of Fernet-Branca. Fernet, as the Italian digestive liquor’s advocates call it, is flavoured with a secret blend of a few dozen herbs, roots, oils and flowers, including gentian. Gentian, according to Fernet’s manufacturer, contains “one of the most bitter substances known.”

I’d tried it before, years ago, and still remember the taste – like dandelion sap mixed with cigarette ash and stale-dated cough syrup. My eyes began watering in anticipation. I quickly took a slug and coughed. McLagan didn’t speak. She didn’t look entirely impressed.

McLagan is 60 and speaks with a soft Australian accent. She keeps her hair in a tidy bob and wears subtly red-framed metal glasses. You’d never peg her as one of the most prescient thinkers and authors in the hard-living world of professional cooking.

Now she pulled a tall, brown clay bottle from a cupboard, this one containing another, more bitter liquor, from Latvia, and poured out a splash. “Even a lot of people who like Fernet can’t stand it,” she said. It was as good as a dare. I grabbed the edge of the counter and took a sip. “Not bad,” I lied.

McLagan had promised to take me on a taste tour through the world of bitter this morning. She calls it the world’s most dangerous flavour. And the booze was only the beginning. I drained a glass of water, swishing it around my mouth as discreetly as I could.

Jennifer McLagan’s Grapefruit Tart

I made this tart for my husband early in our marriage, and then like many things I forgot about it. He requested it several times, but I could never find the recipe – it was lost for a decade or more. Then several years ago I found it tucked inside another cookbook. It is one of those typically vague French recipes, a list of ingredients in no particular order with no real instructions. Since I rediscovered it I’ve been playing with it or, as I think of it, improving it. For the pastry, you can also buy a premade shell from the store.

Grapefruit Tart

Serves 8

• 1/2 recipe Sweet Butter Pastry
• 3 eggs
• Fine sea salt
• 2 small grapefruit
• 6 tablespoons (90 g) unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup (100 g) superfine (caster) sugar
• 3/4 cup (150 g) granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup / 175 ml water

Roll out the pastry on a floured surface and line a 9-inch /23-cm tart pan. Prick the base of the tart with a fork, right through to the metal, then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Place a heavy baking sheet or pizza stone in the oven and preheat it to 375°F .

Separate 1 of the eggs, and add the yolk to the other 2 eggs. Whisk the egg white with a pinch of salt.

Line the tart with parchment paper and fill it with dried beans. Place it on the hot baking sheet and bake until the pastry is set, about 15 minutes. Remove the paper and beans and continue to bake for another 5 minutes or until the base is lightly coloured. Remove the tart shell from the oven on the baking sheet and lower the oven temperature to 325 F .

Meanwhile, finely grate the zest from 1 grapefruit and squeeze the juice. Pour the juice into a measuring cup, you should have 2/3 to 3/4 cup . Pour the juice into a small saucepan, add the zest, and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil until reduced to 1/2 cup , about 4 minutes. Let cool, then strain through a fine-mesh sieve, pushing on the zest to extract all the juice. Place the butter in a small saucepan and melt over low heat; set aside to cool.

In a bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk, then whisk in the superfine sugar. Continue to whisk until the sugar is well blended, then whisk in the juice, melted butter, and a pinch of salt.

Brush the base of the tart shell with the beaten egg white, making sure it goes into all the holes. Return it to the oven, on a baking sheet, for 4 minutes.

Pour the filling into the tart shell, and bake until barely set, 15 to 18 minutes; the filling should still be wobbly, but not runny, in the centre. Transfer the tart to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

Cut the remaining grapefruit in half from top to bottom. Cut each half into thin half-moon slices, about 1/8 inch. You need about 20 slices. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place a large wire rack on top.

Put the granulated sugar in a saucepan and add the water. Place over low heat and stir until the sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil and boil for 1 minute. Add only enough grapefruit slices to make a single layer of fruit in the syrup. Cover, and simmer gently until the pith is translucent, 5 to 6 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the slices, drain, and transfer them to the rack on the baking sheet. Add the remaining slices in batches and continue simmering, covered, until they are all cooked. You’ll need 16 slices for the tart, so if 1 or 2 fall apart don’t worry, you can eat them.

Mentally divide the tart into 8 portions. On each portion, place 2 slices of cooked grapefruit, overlapping them so the rind edge is to the outside and they make a stylized fish shape. You can, of course, cover the tart in cooked grapefruit slices, and while this looks very pretty, it makes the tart very difficult to cut. I prefer practicality to looks in this recipe.

McLagan’s first book, called Bones, was published in 2005 as a reaction to the rise of the boneless, skinless chicken breast; in our rush for convenience we’d abandoned the tastes and the textures of cooking and eating bone-in meats. Within a few years of Bones’ publication you could scarcely go to a restaurant without seeing whole roasted marrow bones on the tables. Fat, McLagan’s ode to the deliciousness and, yes, the healthfulness of animal fat, came out three years later. (“That one was about six years ahead of its time,” she says.)

2011’s Odd Bits celebrated animal hearts, livers, kidneys, hooves, lungs, tripe and other offal, lending not just momentum, but also many of the techniques and recipes that propelled the rise of North American nose-to-tail cooking.

Bitter, which will be released this week in Canada and the U.S., is perhaps her most difficult subject yet. “Bitter is a negative to most people,” she told me. “It’s a bad word in North America.” But it’s also the most complex and sophisticated of the tastes, the book argues – or as McLagan’s friend, the cook and author Naomi Duguid puts it in Bitter’s epigraph, “Bitter is the gatekeeper of adult taste.”

So maybe my response to the Fernet and that Latvian rotgut were a little childish. I had time to redeem myself. McLagan had laid out a pair of knobbly green bitter melons on her kitchen counter, as well as celery leaves, orange zest, walnuts, prunes marinated in black tea, a package of ground pork and a bottle of homemade tonic water. We were about to make a very bitter lunch.

Prunes marinated in black tea and orange peel.

Bitter was borne from McLagan’s remembrance of the grapefruit she used to eat for breakfast growing up in Melbourne, Australia. The grapefruit of McLagan’s childhood was white-fleshed and bitter – her mother used to sprinkle it with sugar to temper the taste. Bitter is a learned taste. You come to love it by experience.

“My experience with grapefruit gave me a positive attitude to bitter, and it became an important part of my flavour palate,” she writes.

Today most grapefruit is pink and sweet-tasting – the bitterness has been bred out of many popular varieties. In North America especially, we’ve forgotten how complex and interesting bitter foods can be.

McLagan studied politics and economics at university in Melbourne before moving to Paris and London in her early 20s, where she worked as a cook. She moved to Toronto in the early 1980s; she and her husband, a prop and special effects maker named Haralds Gaikis, have lived here for 33 winters, she says. McLagan worked as one of the city’s top food stylists until Bones’ publication. She’s been a full-time cookbook writer ever since.

The pair spend winters and summers in Ontario, spring and fall in Europe (they keep a small apartment in Paris). In Europe, bitterness never disappeared. In Italy, she’d drink Campari with soda and an orange slice, and the gently bitter digestives called amari. In France she’d eat bitter frisée salads with a poached egg and nubs of fatty bacon sprinkled on top.

She built bitter into her cooking. “Citrus zests, turnips, rapini, chicories and cardoons became some of my favourite tastes, and I found myself craving them,” she writes. When McLagan made caramel she’d cook the sugar until it began smoking – the heat breaks down sugar’s simple sweetness into a few hundred new molecules that taste sour, buttery, alcoholic, fruity, toasty, nutty and with enough cooking, complexly bitter. In North America, caramel was almost always one-note sweet.

That complexity is perhaps bitter’s greatest drawing power: Unlike sweet, sour or salty, which are simple, easily describable sensations, bitter comes in myriad flavours and textures, from astringent to burnt-tasting to herbal-medicinal, and nearly every person experiences them in a different way. “Thousands of different compounds in foods elicit a bitter response,” McLagan writes.

In her kitchen that morning, we started with something simple, a bowl of prunes chilled in a bath of strong black tea and orange peel. The sweetness of the fruit, the tannins and astringency of the tea and the bitter-floral oils of the orange played off each other, so that no one flavour spun out of balance.

McLagan roasted celery stalks until they were crisp and caramelized, subtly bitter and sweet at the same time, with tarragon thrown in for a layer of anise.

Before lunch, she handed me another glass. She’d mixed some gin with an orange-coloured tonic she’d made the week earlier. Her recipe calls for allspice, star anise, lemongrass, citrus zest and juice, peppercorns, powdered cinchona bark from the tropics, salt … The sensation of drinking homemade tonic water after a lifetime of the store stuff was like seeing a full-colour movie for the first time after being stuck all my life with black and white.

“In the kitchen, eschewing bitter is like cooking without salt, or eating without looking,” McLagan writes. I’d hardly been a bitter-avoider until then – I’d even begun seeking it out in green vegetables and chocolate, especially – but clearly I hadn’t also fully embraced its possibilities.

Bitter is filled with recipes for arugula and prosciutto pizza, caramel ice cream, pumpkin-radicchio risotto and a pretty spectacular looking grapefruit tart – hardly what you’d call double-dare dishes.

Rony’s Brussels Sprouts and Chickpeas

Serves 4 to 6

• 1 cup (180 g) dried chickpeas, soaked overnight in water, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 3/4 cup chicken stock, preferably homemade
• 500 g Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
• 2 tablespoons dry sherry

Drain the chickpeas and place in a saucepan. Cover them with cold water by two inches and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer until cooked. This can take from 30 minutes to over an hour, so you need to keep an eye on them. When they are cooked, remove from the heat, uncover, stir in 1 teaspoon of salt, and leave to cool for 30 minutes. Then drain them and spread them on a baking sheet lined with a towel to dry.

Pour 2 tablespoons of the olive oil into a large heavy frying pan with a lid, and place over medium heat. When hot, add the shallot and cook until soft. Add the chickpeas, season with salt and pepper, and sauté until lightly browned. Add 1/4 cup of the chicken stock and bring to a boil, stirring to deglaze the pan by scraping up any browned bits from the bottom. Tip the contents of the pan into a bowl.

Wipe out the pan and then add the remaining 2 tablespoons oil. Place over high heat, and when hot, add the Brussels sprouts. Try and get as many of the sprouts cut side down as you can. Cook the sprouts until dark brown on one side, then add the remaining chicken stock, season with salt and pepper, lower the heat, cover, and cook until the Brussels sprouts are tender but still crisp.

Add the chickpeas, shallots, and any liquid and cook until warmed through. Check the seasoning and pour in the sherry. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Recipe adapted from Bitter © 2014 by Jennifer McLagan. Photography by Aya Brackett. Published by HarperCollins Canada. All rights reserved.

She uses bitterness as a team player, as a way to temper salt, spice or sweetness, or to mellow the decadence of fat. “As soon as you put fat with bitter – maybe that’s why I did this book. You put bacon dressing on some bitter greens, it’s just delicious. Or braise some endive in butter and it caramelizes and it just retains a tiny bit of its bitterness.”

McLagan cautions that you’d never make a meal of only bitter dishes, just as you’d never make a meal of only sour or salty or sweet.

Except for at her house that morning. Bitterness was the entire point. The last savoury course she made was Asian bitter melon seared with pork, chiles, garlic and onions. As she served it, she cautioned that it was the most intensely bitter recipe in the book.

I hope she’s right. Even against the sweetness of the onions and garlic and the seared pork’s savoury voluptuousness, that bitter melon was what you’d call pungent. Still, I liked it.

I even had a second helping.

McLagan makes a dish featuring Asian bitter melon.

BITTER SWEET

Most people aren’t born with a love of bitter foods – it’s something you develop over time. Here are Jennifer McLagan’s tips for getting started.

1. Buy some chocolate. Every day for 10 days, eat a small piece of cheap milk chocolate, followed by a piece of 65 per cent cocoa chocolate, and then a piece of 85 per cent cocoa chocolate (the most bitter), letting them melt slowly on your tongue. “They say it takes 10 tries of a food to adjust your palate,” McLagan says. “I think a lot of people could eat chocolate for 10 days.”

2. Eat your tea. Pour hot Earl Grey over prunes, add a piece of orange peel, and let it steep in the fridge for a couple of days. The taste is only slightly bitter – and fabulously complex.

3. Cut the bitter with fat. Braise some endive leaves in butter and a bit of salt until they turn caramelized and golden.

4. Eat some walnuts. Whether in a Waldorf salad, a lightly sweetened cake or as a substitution for pine nuts in Italian pesto, walnuts add a mildly tannic-bitter interest. Just don’t peel their skins or blanch them in water first, McLagan warns – it takes away walnuts’ goodness.

5. Drink a Negroni. Combine one part each of gin, sweet vermouth and Campari over ice in a glass. Add an orange twist and stir.

Canada China Trade: FIPA agreement with China: What's really in it for Canada?

ANALYSIS

FIPA agreement with China: What's really in it for Canada?

Canadian government has been playing down domestic objections to investment agreement with China

By Patrick Brown, CBC News Posted: Sep 19, 2014 5:00 AM ET Last Updated: Sep 19, 2014 7:39 AM ET

The Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) between China and Canada goes into effect Oct. 1. It has raised debate about what benefits Canada will see from the deal.

About The Author

Patrick Brown
Eye on Asia

Former CBC correspondent Patrick Brown has reported from world capitals and dusty backwaters for over 30 years, with a particular emphasis on Asia, having been based at different times in Bangkok, Delhi and, most recently, Beijing. He now splits his time between Canada and China as an independent documentary-maker. Follow Patrick Brown on Twitter: @truthfromfacts

The secrecy shrouding the much-delayed Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China makes it hard for experts, let alone average Canadians, to figure out what benefits this country will see from the deal.

While reporting on Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the first time, during his visit to China in early 2012, I wrote a column with the headline Great Glorious and Always Correct, which began: “If Stephen Harper ever gets tired of being Canada’s Prime Minister, he might like to consider a second career in China – he’d fit right in.”

Used to a degree of give and take with previous prime ministers on the road, I had been struck by Harper’s similarity to a Chinese official surrounded by a servile entourage, and by the transformation of the parliamentary press gallery into a steno pool.

• Canada-China investment treaty to come into force Oct. 1
• 5 things to know about the Canada-China investment treaty

“The ‘press availability’ consists of six journalists asking their prepared questions in turn, each receiving a prepared answer which has been carefully redacted to give as little information as possible, paint as rosy a picture as possible, and claim as much credit as possible,” I wrote. “When Chinese officials discuss their own wise and far-seeing policies, it’s customary to describe the Communist Party of China as Great, Glorious, and Always Correct. It’s a phrase Harper might consider borrowing."

I pointed out how, having spent a total of less than a week in China (including his first visit in 2009), Harper claimed to have:

• Developed new ways of dealing with his Chinese counterparts that had eluded his weak and foolish predecessors.
• Negotiated an agreement on FIPA, which those same predecessors had tried and failed to negotiate for two decades.
• To have wangled a couple of pandas where previous panda-seeking prime ministers had always been denied.

The pandas duly arrived in Toronto, and have been happily munching on gourmet bamboo and delighting zoo visitors ever since. But the Foreign Investment agreement, known as FIPA, quickly disappeared from view.

The government revealed the text of the FIPA agreement and signed it in Vladivostok not long after the Beijing trip, and gave a briefing to the parliamentary trade committee for one single hour in October 2012. Then the cone of silence descended.

'It is hard to understand why (FIPA) has been shrouded in secrecy, why it was not ratified for almost two years, and why there has been no attempt to answer questions with anything much beyond breezy assurances that it is a good thing.'

That is, until last week, when two great Canadian mysteries were resolved within days of each other.

On Tuesday, with the pomp of a press conference appropriate to a glorious prime ministerial achievement, Harper announced the discovery in the Arctic of the wreckage of one of the two ships of the Franklin expedition, which went missing while searching for the Northwest Passage in 1846.

Then late Friday afternoon, the witching hour favoured by spinmeisters with stealthy announcements they hope everyone will forget by Monday, a press release revealed that the agreement with China, mysteriously unratified for almost two years, has been approved by cabinet. It goes into effect Oct. 1.

Critics of the agreement, such as Gus Van Harten, an Osgoode Hall law professor who has written two books on investment treaties, raise several key objections:

• Canadian governments are locked in for a generation. If Canada finds the deal unsatisfactory, it cannot be cancelled completely for 31 years.
• China benefits much more than Canada, because of a clause allowing existing restrictions in each country to stay in place. Chinese companies get to play on a relatively level field in Canada, while maintaining wildly arbitrary practices and rules for Canadian companies in China.
• Chinese companies will be able to seek redress against any laws passed by any level of government in Canada which threaten their profits. Australia has decided not to enter FIPA agreements specifically because they allow powerful corporations to challenge legislation on social, environmental and economic issues. Chinese companies investing heavily in Canadian energy will be able seek billions in compensation if their projects are hampered by provincial laws on issues such as environmental concerns or First Nations rights, for example.
• Cases will be decided by a panel of professional arbitrators, and may be kept secret at the discretion of the sued party. This extraordinary provision reflects an aversion to transparency and public debate common to the Harper cabinet and the Chinese politburo.
• Differences between FIPA and the North American Free Trade Agreement may offer intriguing loopholes for American lawyers to argue for equal treatment under the principle of Most Favoured Nation.

In contrast, others such as Matthew Kronby, a lawyer specializing in international trade and investment who worked for the federal government’s trade law bureau for 15 years before going into private practice, dismiss these fears as overblown.

One objection raised by critics of FIPA is that Chinese companies investing heavily in Canadian energy will be able seek billions in compensation if their projects are hampered by provincial laws on issues such as environmental concerns or First Nations rights.

When details of the treaty were released in 2012, Kronby wrote in the Globe and Mail that evidence from agreements that China and Canada each have with other countries supports the government view that FIPA is a virtuous agreement which offers protection to Canadian investors in China, and Chinese investors in Canada.

Most Canadians lack the legal education needed to judge who is right on the finer points of a complex document, Van Harten or Kronby, but they have reason to doubt the good faith of a government which has done everything in its power to prevent informed debate both in parliament and among citizens.

If the agreement is indeed an important step forward for Canada’s relationship with China, it is hard to understand why it has been shrouded in secrecy, why it was not ratified for almost two years, and why there has been no attempt to answer questions with anything much beyond breezy assurances that it is a good thing.

If on the other hand, there are serious flaws in FIPA, future Canadian governments will have another reason to take a leaf from China’s playbook.

When trying to get their way, Chinese diplomats often invoke “The Century of Humiliation” and “Unequal Treaties,” referring to the defeats, occupations, and one-sided agreements imposed by foreign powers, beginning with the first Opium War of 1839-42.

The 31-year lock-in of FIPA is short of a century, but Chinese negotiators should not be surprised if Canadian diplomats start showing up with complaints of their own about “Unequal Treaties.”

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Duelling FIP(P)As

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If you're confused about the name and acronyms FIPA and FIPPA, that's understandable. The federal government has many Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements with various countries, and although the name has two Ps, the acronym doesn't (FIPA).

The government of Ontario has the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, with two Ps in the name and acronym (FIPPA).

Both acts are related to protection and privacy, but the similar names may lead to confusion rather than clarity.