Imperial Canada Inc.. Alain Deneault

      INTRODUCTION

      Canada: Home to a Dangerous Industry

      How did it come to this? Canada, once known as a defender of international peace and noble principles, today has acquired a new reputation as the home of a highly controversial industry. Today, Canada is known around the world as home to oil, gas, and mining companies that choose to register here in order to benefit from our permissive mining regulations and preferential tax structure. Three out of four of the world’s mining companies operate out of Canada while often conducting exploration and extraction projects located elsewhere. Ontario alone accommodates more than fourteen hundred of these companies, even though only forty-three mines are in operation in the province. The damage these companies inflict is experienced generally not by Canadians, but by citizens of other countries. As a result, a troubling number of farmers, indigenous people, and other citizens of countries around the world are angry about the actions of Canadian-based mining companies. It is no longer unusual to see the Canadian flag torched or disfigured during public demonstrations in South Asia, Africa, or Latin America.

      Canada’s controversial role in the world goes far beyond our exportation of uranium and asbestos.1 Mining corporations, often Canadian, are said to have contributed in one way or another to conflicts that have placed millions of people in jeopardy and have led to deaths, systematic rape, the forced recruitment of child soldiers, and legions of refugees. Multiple sources point out connections between some Canadian-based corporations and conflicts motivated by “economic development projects” that ultimately are associated with net losses to public treasuries, incidents of corruption (either proven or apparent), and smuggling that destroys people’s livelihood. Over the past twenty years, sources around the world have extensively recorded widespread malfeasance by Canadian mining companies, primarily in the South and in Eastern Europe: violent evictions of entire populations, massive unemployment, and homelessness instead of the promised “job creation,” long-lasting pollution of large tracts of land, major public-health problems, and tax evasion reaching into the billions. Overall, the record provides convincing evidence that “economic development projects” often leave host countries worse, and not better off, than they were before.

      The sources that document these truths form the basis of our argument, specifically, that it is time to speak openly about Canadian government grants and other forms of regulatory and fiscal support that fund Canadian-based mining companies and allow them to develop controversial extractive sites abroad. Perhaps more crucially, it is time to speak openly about the ways in which our legal jurisdiction is used as a base-and-launch facility for questionable projects overseas. Canada stands out as a judicial and financial haven that shelters its mining industry from the political or legal consequences of its extraterritorial activities by providing a lax domestic regulatory structure that it seeks to export through international agencies, diplomatic channels, and “economic development projects.”

      Although information critical of Canada is abundant overseas, it is hard to find in Canada. The owners or managers of the country’s media conglomerates, both private and public (and all of them major financial players), are committed to supporting the mining industry. As a matter of course, Canadian media suppress information about an exploitive process that is described in other countries as abusive or even criminal. Ironically, the citizens of Germany, Belgium, and the United States know more about our grim international reputation than do Canadians. How many of us are aware of the neo-colonial activities of Canadian-based mining companies abroad and the alleged (yet broadly documented) human-rights abuses and environmental tragedies associated with these activities?

      Reports of the actions of Canadian-based mining companies in the South and in Eastern Europe come from international sources in Buenos Aires and Kinshasa; Berlin, Brussels, and London; Paris, New York, and Washington; Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. All have produced documents that enjoy three levels of credibility: first, they have been produced by authors recognized as credible by a significant number of their peers; second, they have been published by academic journals, public institutions, press agencies, independent organizations, or reputable media institutions; and third, they frequently corroborate one another, or at least arrive at similar conclusions, even though they originate with authors who do not know each other and who work in different disciplines and languages, for different organizations, and for audiences that are located in different cities and continents. This extremely abundant literature is not yet proof in the legal sense, and our purpose here is not to justify these allegations beyond the documents on which they are based. What is most troubling, however, is not their frightening number, but the consistency with which they reach similar conclusions.

      Equally troubling are the difficulties that the publication of these documents has brought on the people and organizations that have shared them with us. Almost all have experienced pressure or faced absurd delay tactics or refusals. Their research into the highly problematic action of Canadian mining companies in the South and in Eastern Europe reflects an appalling reality that lies just out of sight, and it is likely that the evidence uncovered is only a fraction of the true extent of the problem.

      Of course, the allegations in these reports must be viewed as unconfirmed until they are subject to scrupulous public investigation. Given the seriousness of the allegations, it is clear that under a truly democratic regime, Canadian authorities and the Canadian judicial system would already have launched official inquiries.

      To our knowledge, none of the extractive sector corporations mentioned in these damning reports has ever acknowledged the truth of the allegations made against them. The corporate response has been either silence or the usual denials claiming that detailed reports are biased and fancifully imagined. Corporations would have us believe that dozens of critical observers, analysts, thinkers, experts, and witnesses to the activities of the Canadian establishment throughout the world are all aligned in the same conspiracy.

      What the sources say about Africa is intolerable. Women living near the Sadiola mine in Mali (partly owned by Toronto-based Iamgold) suffered multiple miscarriages, probably caused by polluted sources of drinking water.2 Several Canadian-based mining companies (Golden Knight Resources, Prestea Sankofa Gold and Prestea Resources Ltd., and Birim Goldfields) carried out violent expropriations of land in Ghana.3 Corporations active in Congo-Kinshasa (Lundin, First Quantum Minerals, and Emaxon) signed one-sided deals during wartime with actual