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PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.
We're continuing our series with Yves Engler, the author of the book The Ugly Canadian:
Stephen Harper's Foreign Policy. And Yves now joins us again from Vancouver. Thanks
for joining us, Yves.
YVES ENGLER: Thanks for having me.
JAY: So, as I explained in the first segment, we're working our way through different aspects
of Prime Minister Harper's foreign policy. And today we're going to talk about Canadian
mining. So, Yves, why don't you pick up from there? Canada's, I guess, one of the, if not
the leading mining nation in the world globally, and also is extensively involved in some of
the most controversial mining.
ENGLER: Yeah, Canada is far and away the biggest mining country in the world. Something like
70 percent of world mining companies are listed on Canadian stock exchanges. From 2002 to
2011, Canadian mining investment abroad went from $30 billion to $210 billion.
And it's an important element in the more rightward shifting Canadian foreign policy,
because so much of Canadian mining investment abroad is dependent upon extreme free-market
capitalism. And those Canadian investments throughout Africa [inaud.] really intimately
tied to the rise of the structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and 1990s and the opening
up of natural resource sector in those countries to foreign investment.
And alongside this huge rise in Canadian mining investment abroad has been innumerable conflicts
that Canadian mining companies had with local communities and where, you know, they spur
violence, security officials from companies in Guatemala, you know, kill people in local
community, or there's incredible ecological decay.
JAY: Give us some specific examples that you explored, that you researched.
ENGLER: In the case of Goldcorp in Guatemala, they've been in a very aggressive conflict
with the local community. In the case of Argentina, Barrick's operations in Argentina, the former
environment minister with the Argentinian government, in a standing committee of the
House of Commons, she accused Barrick Gold of buying off the officials in her department
and threatening people on her staff and threatening her; and in the case of Mexico, a Canadian
company involved in killing people in the community. At this point, really, you can
pick any country in the Global South and there is an example of a Canadian-run mine that
has spurred social conflict, that has spurred--.
JAY: Tell us the story of Canadian mining in the Congo.
ENGLER: In the case of the Congo, there's more $3 billion in Canadian mining investment
in the Congo. There's innumerable--there are a number of different sort of kind of horror
stories. There's one example that's particularly controversial from the standpoint of the Canadian
government, which is that in late 2009, the Congolese government rescinded a mining concession
from First Quantum, which is a Vancouver-based company. And in response to the Congolese
government rescinding this concession, the Harper government blocked the Paris Club of
debtor nations and debt forgiveness to the Congolese government--this is debt forgiveness
that was agreed to by all of the other members of the Paris Club of debtor nations. This
was debt that was accrued during the Mobutu dictatorship. This is odious debt the majority
of Congolese, impoverished Congolese should not have had to repay. And like I said, it
was agreed to by the majority of the Paris Club of debtor nations. And to put pressure
on the Congolese government after they had rescinded First Quantum's concession, the
Harper government blocked this debt forgiveness.
Ultimately, they were only able to stall the debt forgiveness, but they did so in the context
of First Quantum having gotten their concession in highly dubious circumstances. They had--according
to a 2002 UN report, they had paid bribes and kickbacks to government officials to win
the concession--and this was in the context of the still-ongoing civil war or multicountry
war in the Congo. And despite the dubious circumstances in which First Quantum had won
their concession in the Congo, the Harper government was willing to block the Paris
Club of debtor nations and then, in fact, even get a whole declaration in the final
G8--2010 G8 meeting in Toronto, get a whole declaration criticizing the Congo for its
treatment of foreign investors. So the Harper government has really aggressively lobbied
for Canadian mining companies, no matter what the circumstances of those Canadian mining
companies are in the local community.
JAY: Well, the Harper government would probably argue that that's their job, to help defend
Canadian business interests abroad. And I think they would probably argue that these
companies, if they're breaking local laws, it's up to local authorities to deal with
them, and on the whole I assume Harper argues they're not breaking local laws. I mean, what's
wrong with that argument?
ENGLER: I think that most Canadians don't like the idea that all that the Canadian state
is about, internationally, is defending the interests of corporate Canada, and particularly
when these companies are involved in conflicts with local communities. And, of course, as
we know, the power dynamics in the local context are often not what they should be in terms
of--the ability of foreign investors to skirt any local laws can be pretty wide. And as
you referred to in the case of the Congo, there's an example of a different Canadian
company that was involved in a massacre of as many as 100 people, where the Canadian
company was actually providing their trucks and different resources to Congolese army
officials, who went in and killed dozens and dozens of people who were opposed to the mining
company and were in conflict with the central government.
So in those cases, of course, the Congolese courts are not going to pursue the case particularly
aggressively in the courts, because of this heavy level of government complicity. But
at the end of the day, there's a number of different Latin American officials who've
said privately to different academic researchers that basically what they see, the Canadian
ambassador in their country, as a representative of the mining companies. That's most of what
the Canadian embassies are doing in countries like Ecuador and Guatemala--advancing the
interests of Canadian mining companies, and no matter--again, no matter what level of
opposition there is internally.
And you have--when Stephen Harper goes on diplomatic trips, you know, after--when he
went to Chile in 2007--not long before he was in Chile, there was a couple of thousand
people that had demonstrated against a Barrick Gold-planned operation in Chile. Harper made
sure when in Chile to go to the Barrick Gold office in Chile and say Barrick Gold follows
Canadian standards of corporate social responsibility; similarly when he was in Tanzania, not long
after Barrick had fired hundreds of striking miners at their Tanzanian operations. At another
Barrick-run mine in Tanzania, there's been dozens of people killed in conflict, and Harper
went out of his way to laud Barrick Gold when in Tanzania.
And what that's doing is that there's already a certain power dynamic within Tanzania or
Chile around the mining companies, obviously, local interests that support the mining operation
and some local interests that don't support the mining operation, and the Harper government
is clearly intervening in the internal politics to side with the mining company even though
there's often very widespread local popular opposition, which I don't think most Canadians
would support.
JAY: Well, there was some talk about a code of conduct for Canadian mining companies abroad.
Where is that at, and what's been the attitude of the Harper government towards that?
ENGLER: Bill C-300, which was a private members bill put forward by a Liberal member of Parliament,
was voted down mostly because all the Conservatives' MPs voted against it. And basically what Bill
C-300 did or would have done is it would have ended official public support to mining companies
found to be engaged in abuses abroad. So it would end--Export Development Canada's financial
support to Canadian mining companies would end, and the support of Canadian embassies
to companies found to be involved in abuses. And this is a pretty modest--in my opinion,
quite a modest bill to bring some controls over Canadian mining companies' operations
abroad. It wasn't legislation that would allow local communities to sue Canadian mining companies
in Canadian courts.
And one of the reasons why so many companies set up--mining companies set up in Canada
is that the legislation is so weak, one element being that in the case of the U.S., you can
hold American companies accountable in American courts for what they do abroad. You can't
do that in Canada.
So there's been other efforts to bring legislation--similar legislation to what exists in the U.S. to
Canada. That's also been--that's been shot down in different committee phases.
JAY: Okay. We're going to continue our series with Yves Engler on Stephen Harper's foreign
policy. So look out for the next chapter, and please join us on The Real News Network.
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