Alain Deneault - Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for the Worlds Mining Industries

Criminality is like a negative of society.

Eva Joly

Canada: Home to a Dangerous Industry

Canada: Tax Haven for the Worlds Extractive Sector

Stock Market Speculation:

Historical Wellspring of the Canadian Economy,

or How Toronto Became the Place

Where the Mining Sector Goes for Capital

Quebec Colonial Ltd.

Some Issues We Need to Address

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 worlds 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.

Canadas controversial role in the world goes far beyond our exportation of uranium and asbestos. 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 peoples 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 countrys 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

But abuses are not restricted to the mining industry. The

The worst example is surely the presence of Canadian mining firms in the

Mining corporations such as .

A number of international sources raise further troubling questions about the consequences of the presence of Canadian mining companies abroad and the ways in which their presence may have intensified conflicts. In

Africa is not the only continent having to cope with Canadian neo-colonialism. In

In our previous book, our jurisdiction in many countries; and second, to suggest ways of ending the practices that need to be stopped. We called on Canadian authorities to institute an independent commission of inquiry into the practices of the extractive industries based in Canada. Four years later, it is becoming more and more urgent that we shed light on the many cases of abuse and crime allegedly committed by these companies and reported at an international level. The discrepancy between accusations and defence in these cases could hardly be larger. On the one hand, we have a substantial number of alleged misdeeds and dubious, if not criminal, practices attributed to Canadian mining companies by a host of different and reliable sources. On the other, we have the offended denials of the accused firms; denials that they regularly back up with legal actions for libel. An independent commission of inquiry could recommend criminal charges against these corporations if and where appropriate, offer public apologies to the peoples wronged by them, and make strong recommendations as to how to stop such practices and undertake the necessary reparation programs in cooperation with local populations. Because every Canadian government to date has supported the mining industry, this commission cannot take the form of a parliamentary commission consisting only of members of Parliament. This is the reason that, as the authors of Noir Canada , we called for an independent commission, at arms length from governments, which would gather input from parties representing all the interests involved.