said by Kardinal:It's an interesting take, but I'm confused about how a company is supposed to stop their shares being bought by foreign investors.
Here's a simplified how....
When a Canadian company goes public they have to have a 'transfer agent' - called what you may recollect as being a trust company. ...a Canadian trust company in fact.
The trust company is the agent which records the beneficial owners of the shares of the pubic company. The trust company is bound to enforce the laws of the land (Canada) when it comes to recording who the shareholders are - if they don't then their license to operate as a trust company is yanked.
So if the law says that certain specified companies (in this case those governed by the Telecom Act) are not to have greater than an aggregate percentage of share held by non-Canadians (real, people, corporations, pension funds, governments, etc...) then the transfer agent will not register the ownership of those offending shares to the foreign entity, and will advise the entity thereof. The foreign entity will NOT be able to vote the shares, nor will it be paid dividends or interest, as the case may be.
If the foreign entity does not voluntarily sell the shares, the transfer agent will sell the shares and send the proceeds to the foreign entity.