The Consistency of Canada’s Foreign Investment Review Process—A Temporal Analysis

Since its inception, Canada’s Foreign Investment Review Agency (FIRA) has been criticized for applying its criteria for screening reviewable foreign direct investments in an inconsistent manner. This paper evaluates the consistency of FIRA’s review process over time, using published data on the disposition of reviewable proposals. The critical notion underlying the test is that discrete and significant changes in acceptance rates for reviewable proposals may indicate unanticipated changes in FIRA’s de facto screening criteria. Significant discrete changes can be identified in the acceptance rates for reviewable proposals over the period 1974-1982. These changes appear to be tied to cyclical conditions in the Canadian economy, which suggests that foreign investors can improve their assessments of FIRA’s de facto criteria by incorporating macroeconomic information and into their legal analysis.© 1984 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1984) 15, 119–129