On How CIDA re-wrote Colombia’s Mining Code and UBC’s CIDA-funded Mining Institute

I think it’s very important for people to be critical of the Institutions they participate in, and the relationships of power they are implicated in.

Last November, the announcement was made that Vancouver-based University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Quebec’s Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal (EPDM) would receive $24.6 million to establish and run the Canadian International Institute for Extractive Industries and Development (CIIEID). The stated aims of the CIIEID is to share Canadian expertise so as to “reduce poverty” and “promote good governance” in developing countries.

Given CIDA, and the government of Canada’s extremely troubling history of supporting Canadian commercial interests in Latin America (as well as other places) and the extractive industry’s controversial reputation in a place like Colombia for being associated with violence and the perpetuation, not reduction of poverty, I think this Institutes merits a critical and public debate on behalf of all stakeholders (including all UBC students, who’s educational privilege will indirectly benefit from the creation of such an Institute).

I appeared on CBC Radio One yesterday to talk about some concerns I had with the Dean of Mining Engineering and Executive Director of the Institute, Dr. Bern Klein. My criticisms are by no means personal, or meant to challenge the stated intentions of the Institute; I think the Institute could have potential to do some positive things, but nevertheless it’s establishment is part of CIDA’s “Extraction as Development” trend and therefore merits scrutiny.

I would love your thoughts on the Institute, my comments, and Dr. Klein’s thoughtful response.

Below is my transcription of the interview. You can listen to it here under episode August 19, 2014.  It starts at approximately 1:00:40.

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August 19, 2013 6:40am. The Early Edition with Rick Cluff, CBC Radio One in Vancouver, 88.1 FM.

Rick Cluff: 24 minutes before 7 o’clock, you’re listening to the Early Edition here on CBC Radio One. A UBC student is concerned about his school’s role in promoting mining in developing countries. Now, earlier this year, the Canadian International Development Agency,  better known as CIDA, granted funding for the new Institute at UBC. The Canadian International Institute for Extractive Industries and Development is slated to open this year, its’ mandate: to provide expertise on sustainable mining to developing countries. In a few minutes we’ll speak with the Director of the Institute, but first we’re joined by Simon Child who studies Political Science at UBC, and he says he’s troubled by what the Institute is trying to do, and he’s with us here in Studio 10. Hello there.

Simon Child: Glad to be with you.

RC: What are you worried about?

SC: I’m worried about, well, um, firstly let me say that I’m here representing myself and I’m going to be speaking about some communities that, um, speak for themselves and that I can’t speak for them, and they can speak for themselves on their issues a lot better, but, I’m worried that, I think this Institute, some serious questions have to raised as to what extent this Institute is part of CIDA’s very problematic “Sustainable Economic Growth” strategy, which is, as we’ve seen, lined up Canadian international development interests with the promotion of Canadian commercial interests abroad.

A quite troubling aspect of this Institute for me is the Advisory Centre, which is going to, quote, “by supporting the design and implementation of better legislation” hopefully promote good governance and reduce poverty, but that begs the question, ‘better’ legislation, y’know, this Institute is going to help developing countries develop ‘better’ legislation, for whom? Let’s look at an example of that.

In Francisco Ramirez Cuellar’s book, “The Profits of Extermination”, he explains how in the late 1990s the Colombian government contracted a Colombian law firm, and CIDA gave money to the Canadian Energy Research Institute, a Canadian think-tank, and they were tasked with drafting a new mining code for Colombia.

What pro-what this resulted in was Law 685 or the 2001 Colombian mining code which lowered royalties for extractive companies from 10-15% to 0.4%! It also lowered environmental protections, and it made the formalization of artisanal miners harder. Basically it was – it begs the question, so if CIDA has this history of helping fund the development of a mining code in Colombia that liberalized mining, uh, practices and was more in the interests of Canadian industry instead of the Colombian government, y’know, what does that say about the prospects for this Institute, I hope it’d be better but…

RC: The Institute is being set up, as I understand it, to help countries develop their mining industries. Isn’t it good to share Canadian expertise on how to develop their industries responsibly and sustaina, and sustainably?

SC: Well again, in who’s interests are these, um, ind, erm, industries going to be developed? As I’ve said with the example of the 2001 mining code, y’know, the government could have said that this was “sharing expertise”, this was “economic liberalization is going to lead to more investment and that’ll create more jobs” but really what that lead to was the benefit, it benefiting Canadian industry and not the Colombian people. So, I think that you have to sort of ask, what are the power relationships here and why is this really going to happen?

RC: So Simon, what questions do you want specifically answered about how this Institute then will operate?

SC: Well, I would like to know, first of all, what’s going to be the role of local communities, ’cause ultimately, who are affected by mining, because ultimately they’re going to be the ones livings with the consequences of, y’know, advice given to legislators, or community development projects, or anything of that nature.

The second question that I have is what measures are there going to be to hold the Institute accountable or have some kind of, um, accountability mechanism so that something like the 2001 Colombia mining code doesn’t happen again.

RC: Is it the Institute’s responsibility though to police how companies mine in other countries?

SC: No! But that’s not what I’m saying, I’m not saying, and I don’t think that it’s the responsibility of the Institute to be responsible for industry. What I AM saying though is that, I think that, with something like the Advisory Centre you have this very problematic history with the 2001 Colombia mining code which CIDA arguably funded to help re-write, so, in things like this, where there may be a conflict of interest, where a Institute, funded by the Canadian government who has a policy of helping promote Canadian commercial interests in a country like Colombia, how is that conflict of interest going to be handled? I hope that the Institute would be independent and could handle it well, but, again, this 2001 example doesn’t give much confidence in that.

RC: Alright, well, let’s find out. Simon, Simon Child, Political Science student at the University of British Columbia. For more on this though, Bern Klein joins us now in the studio. He’s the acting Executive Director of the Canadian International Institute for the Extractive Industries and Development. Good morning!

Dr. Bern Klein: Good morning.

RC: ah, how do you respond to, first of all, to Simon’s concerns about, this is nothing more than an extension of the commercial side of mining, and tries to legitimize how Canadian companies operate abroad?

BK: Okay, well I think some background is probably helpful here. When there was an announcement that such an Institute was going to be created at a Canadian university, uh, we felt very well-suited to try to work in this area because we have been trying to work in this area for at least the last, um, almost 15 years at UBC as a mining program that’s quite unique, that we’ve had interdisciplinary research work, in areas, um, like social responsibility, human rights, environmental issues related to mining and a lot of work has been done globally and internationally.

So when the institute was cr-when the Institute was announced, we got very excited. We believe that we were awarded the Institute based on our track record, we had a unique qualification in this area, and the goal of the Institute is to support governance, not governments, support governance, in order to support sustainable development and reduce poverty, so, that’s what we want to do. Simon has raised issues about the Advisory Centre and if the Advisory Centre was solely intended to go in and uh, express what Canadian practices were, that wouldn’t be, that wouldn’t represent who we are as an Institute. We are actually made up of a coalition of Simon Fraser University, Ecole Polytechnique, and UBC, plus about 60 strategic partners across Canada, and these are people that we drew from from other universities, NGOs who have strong interest in communities, some companies, and other experts.

So, our intent is that whenever we work  in a country, that we are going to be engaging with the national government, but at the same time applying what we feel needs to be, needs to be done. And to do that, engagement in the community is a priority.

RC: Well since you brought up the Advisory Centre, earlier we spoke with Chris Arsenault who’s a Canadian journalist reporting for Al Jazeera. He specializes in extractive industries, and this is what he had to say about CIDA’s history in creating mining codes in Colombia.

[Clip] Chris Arsenault: The Canadian International Development Agency, partnered with a Colombian law firm, and a think-tank at the University of Calgary, CERI, the Canadian Energy Research Institute to help re-write Colombia’s mining code. This happened post-2001 in a period when security was improving in Colombia and there was a lot of interest in investing in the country. Now, critics of this new code say that either by design or by default, the code benefited companies, especially foreign companies, at the expense of Colombians because of a decrease in tax dollars for public services.

RC: So this is exactly what Simon mentioned as well. So there is concern about this. How do you respond?

BK: Okay, well, in two ways. First of all, we are independent. We are a University. We are not a part of the Federal government and we’re not part of industry. Secondly, one of the centres that make up this Institute is called the Engagement and Dialogue Centre and that was spearheaded by a group at Simon Fraser University who’d been working in areas of conflict at the community level for a long time.

In addition, one of my colleagues, Professor Marcello Veiga, he’s globally known for his work with artisanal mining. We are, we have a track record of working at the community level, and when we develop any program, we are going to want to make sure that we really understand what is the situation in a country, which means that we need to engage with the community. Quite often, conflict arises because the community is not listened to. We also know that in order to develop resources, you may have a permit from the national government, but if you don’t have community support, you’re never going to build that mine. And there are many examples of that. And I think that even industry is aware of that. So it’s in government’s, industry, as well as community interests to have a shared, to be able to share their, um, concerns, to make sure that things are being developed in a way that is acceptable to the community.

RC: Well, best of luck with it! Best of luck to you both on this. Simon’s gonna be watching, as well as the rest of the people interested in this, and Bern, best of luck with the Institute.

BK: Thank you.

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Making A Killing: Colombia and the Canadian Military Industrial Complex

John Baird

A few months ago, I wrote to the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, John Baird about Canada’s decision to allow Canadian weapons manufacturers to sell arms to Colombia. Baird had put Colombia on the Automatic Firearms Country Control List (AFCCL),  a list of now 34 countries to which Canadians can get export permits for weapons. The weapons which Canadian businesses would now be able to export to Colombia, actually aren’t even legal in Canada (see below).

In a brief and polite response, Baird informed me there had been “broad consultation” with the Canadian public and  and different government departments which had informed the decision. Apparently, the consultation touched on “multiple issues” including human rights, peace, stability, the risk of diversion, and interestingly, “commercial opportunities for Canadian business” (emphasis mine).

To Baird’s credit, he did mention that each export permit is assessed individually, with particular emphasis on what the “end-use” of the weapons will be, and if they are in accordance with Canadian foreign and  defense policy, law, and “including the potential impact of export on human rights and armed conflicts”.

At the end of his correspondence, Baird listed off a myriad of highly problematic initiatives as part of Canada’s relationship to Colombia, perhaps trying to show some sort of misguided intentions to “help” Colombia; in particular Baird lauded the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and how Colombia has received benefits from DFAIT’s “Counter-Terrorism and Anti-Crime Capacity Building” programs.

 

Clearly all of these policies, but particularly for now the AFCCL, are very concerning and merit their own analysis. The larger point here is, despite Baird taking the time to reply, the decision of what will be a “risky” sale of weapons of mass destruction (automatic weapons)  to a country experiencing armed conflict and endemic levels of violence will be decided in Ottawa, with “commercial” interests in mind. This is all working under the militarist assumption that a country having a militarized society, or an extremely powerful military (especially with an ongoing civil war) is a desirable thing.

It goes without saying that the current Canadian government is accepting the Colombian government’s narrative that Colombia is a democratic, improving, stabilizing, and human-rights respecting country that is ready for foreign (Canadian) investment in order to “develop”. It’s important to note that, as Human Rights Watch has stated, the paramilitaries or “right-wing death squads” as others have called them, who are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, operate like a “sixth branch of the Army”, and the Colombian army itself is often responsible for extremely egregious violations of human rights (forced disappearances, massacres, extrajudicial executions, sexual violence, etc), particularly to the civilian population it is supposedly defending. This is to whom the Canadian government thinks it is a good idea to sell guns to…..

It’s been long known that Canadian business and the Canadian government have at best been negligent to the humanitarian catastrophe of mass violence in Colombia, choosing to focus instead on promoting ‘economic growth’ through trade (which is often not unassociated). However, it now seems that, after Baird’s decision, the Canadian Military Industrial Complex will be able to directly make bank off of one of the bloodiest armed conflicts in the Western Hemisphere.

For some key points on armed violence in Colombia, check out my initial oversimplified letter below (which perhaps was a bit too charitable with the Minister). For more information on the Canadian Military Industrial Complex and how it is profiting from and exacerbating human rights violations the world over, check out this piece by Richard Sanders.

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January 3, 2013

“Dear Prime Minister Harper, Minister Ablonczy, Minister Baird, and Mr. Hiebert,

I hope this message finds you all well after the holidays.

…I am an extremely concerned Canadian voter. This morning, it came to my attention that the Honourable Minister Baird, by amending the “Automatic Firearms Country Control” list, has removed the export bans on high-capacity magazines and assault weapons to my native Colombia. These same kinds of weapons are banned in Canada, as they are considered too dangerous to be on our streets. Moreover, these same kind of weapons are the ones which were used to murder over 26 innocent Americans in the Newton massacre last month.

Colombia, although much safer and less violent than in the last a decade ago, is still one of the most violent countries in the world. The homicide rate hovers at around 30-38 per 100,000, making at among the world’s 15 most violent countries. Approximately hundreds of thousands are displaced every year due to violence. Although the government is currently in promising peace talks with Colombia’s largest rebel group, the FARC, they continue to fight and terrorize local communities. This armed conflict is compounded by extremely high levels of urban violence, the ELN rebels, narcotrafficking groups, and the paramilitary successor groups or BACRIM/criminal bands which account for around a disproportionate amount of the violence in Colombia.

Colombia over the last decade has had over 200,000 murders. 75% of homicides in Colombia are committed by firearms. There are over 14,000 child soldiers in Colombia who are arguably forced to operate these kind of high-powered weapons. As per the Colombian army, it is estimated that from 2002-2006, over 3,000 young, mostly impoverished, male civilians were killed and made to look as insurgents by the Colombian army so as to increase kill counts. In Medellin a few days ago, an 11 year old girl lost her life to a stray bullet. She was only one of over 300 victims of stray bullets last year. Although Colombia is making great improvements in overcoming our violent legacy, human rights and violence are still clearly very important concerns.

I understand that in order for arms exporters to be issued a permit to export weapons under ACCFL, the government must review each case with ‘strict controls’. I also understand that Canada has been extremely generous with Colombia by making it a priority country for bilateral aid, and donating millions to support both the nascent peace process and the Land restitution law to bring growth and reconciliation to a country that has been too long plagued by violence.

However, given that Canada and Colombia’s relationship is, supposedly mutually beneficial, I fail to see the benefit that Colombia would attain from buying more arms during a peace process in which Colombian society is trying to turn away from guns. Gun bans have proven extremely effective in Colombia; earlier this year Bogota Mayor Gustavo Petro banned handguns in the capital city, leading to the murder rate dropping to its lowest point in 27 years. Bogota is now safer than many American inner cities.

I am therefore extremely curious as to how exactly, beyond ‘market opportunities’ for Canadian arms dealer, your government has considered that allowing the export of extremely dangerous and deadly firearms into a very violent country like Colombia, will be consistent with your policy of creating a mutually beneficial relationship with both countries.

I would be very appreciative if I could please be informed as to your government’s rationale for adding Colombia to the AFCCL.

Please do not conflate ‘market opportunities’ for Canadians with the re-militarization of Colombian society; if this is not the case, then please inform me otherwise.”

’Because We Really Care’: Dissolution of CIDA, how it challenges myths about Canada, its impact on Colombia

“Charity…is the opium of the privileged” – Chinua Achebe, Rest In Peace.

I wanted to give a quick reaction to the news that the Canadian International Development Agency, or CIDA, the body of the Federal government in charge of administering Canadian overseas development aid, is going to be folded into the Department for Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).

There have been a mix of reactions in the Canadian foreign policy Twitter and blogospheres; Director of Partnership Africa-Canada Ian Smillie says that this is a further step away from Canada’s legacy of being a leader among giving assistance to ‘poor countries’; whereas another Canadian foreign policy heavyweight, Roland Paris from the UOttawa, argues that a merger may not in and of itself be a bad thing. Surprisingly some CIDA officials are lamenting the merger, whereas Lloyd Axworthy is welcoming it.

The rationale of the merger being presented by the government is to put development on “equal footing” with trade and diplomacy, and to have a more unified, consistent Canadian voice promoting Canadian ‘values and interests’ abroad.

Overseas Development Assistance, or ODA, in Canada is the legacy of Liberal governments trying to create a very particular image of Canada internally and externally. One of the founding moments for ODA was the Ceylon Conference in which CIDA’s predecessor was established by Nobel laureate Lester B. Pearson. Under Liberal Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, Canada’s was quite firmly committed to ODA in Sub-Saharan Africa. Canada, with it’s lack of colonial baggage and bilingual capacity/ties to the Commonwealth and La Francophonie, was always in a ‘good’ position to bolster ties with Francophone and Anglophone African countries through ODA. With the War on/of Terror and Canada’s participation in the NATO mission, Afghanistan also became a development priority. We Canadians framed ourselves as honest and disinterested brokers wanting to do what Americans couldn’t – be the benign and benevolent Westerners who wanted to promote growth, peace, and equality without any  vested interests.

This construction of an innocent and humanitarian Canadian foreign policy has been part and parcel of the discussion surrounding CIDA’s end. Take for example, this interesting commentary from the CBC piece (this is not an editorial or an opinion piece, I might add):

“A confidential draft document obtained by CBC News last fall outlined the broad strokes of a foreign policy shift toward focusing Canada’s international efforts primarily on one goal: forging new trade deals and business opportunities in the rapidly expanding markets of Asia and South America.

The document made scant mention of Canada’s traditional roles as peacemakers in war zones like Afghanistan or foreign aid providers in disasters such as Haiti. It also did not mention using trade deals to pressure countries such as China on human rights and other matters of democratic principle.”

The allusion to “peacekeeping” and “democratic principles” are not an accident. Perhaps the author of this article at the supposedly objective CBC is, like Smillie and Axworthy, in my opinion, a believer in the old form of Canadian aid and it’s ties to our national identity as somehow being altruistic abroad. However, whether Liberal or Conservative, it’s quite clear that this has never been the case, and Canada’s ODA has always come with conditions, and has always been influenced or driven by the extractive sector. During Chretien’s time this was painfully obvious during the First and Second Congo Wars, and the multiple blunders of Canadian industry, DFAIT, and other actors in the DRC. 

In other words, many of those, like Smillie, lamenting this change as a further erosion of Canada’s legacy of “leadership” in Africa with respect to ODA, are romanticizing an era which never really was in reality, but was integral to our identity as a country of people ‘who really care’.

This development ideology stands in stark contrast to the one of the Harper Conservatives. They have confidently, some would say aggressively, shifted Canada’s development interests away from “the poorest of the poor”, to use that extremely problematic language, to aligning Canadian development and diplomatic interests closer to commercial ones. The CIDA merger, I believe, is a significant moment as part of a larger pattern. CIDA, for the Conservatives, was perhaps a Liberal relic that really had no place in their vision for ODA.

Throughout the last few years, this change in ideology in Canada’s ODA has manifested itself in a variety of scandals and controversies, as the Conservatives were perhaps considered to be ruining something that Liberals and progressives saw as a dear part of Canadian national life (helping poor people in far away places). Moments of note include how former Minister for International Co-Operation (the head of CIDA) Bev Oda wrote in a “NOT” for a grant to KAIROS, a well respected NGO who had been doing advocacy around the Israel-Palestine conflict, a strict no-no among new CIDA guidelines for Canadian NGOs.Under Oda, there was also a slight creeping of social conservatism into the development agenda, such as when Canada refused to fund abortions as part of a G8 Maternal Health initiative.

Current Minister of International Cooperation, Julian Fantino (L), and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, John Baird (R).

Current Minister Julian Fantino, for his part, drew a lot of heat for freezing assistance to Haiti, a longtime charity ‘darling’ for Canada, due to a lack of ‘results’, and for CIDA giving funds to NGOs that are associated with the anti-Queer movement in Uganda/on their webpage describe homosexuality as a kind of deviance.  

The most significant change, for me however, is the cozying up of Canadian commercial interests with Canadian ‘humanitarian’ and development initiatives, and the leaving of a Liberal policy of helping “the poorest” in Africa to assisting countries that we need to get resources from in Latin America. Obviously, the Liberals’ development agenda, as mentioned above, wasn’t much better, but the Conservatives is definitely more blatant in what it’s after.

This has really taken shape in two key developments. Firstly, the dropping of many impoverished lower-income African nations such as the DRC from CIDA’s list of priority countries, to a slim list of 20 ‘countries of focus’ for bilateral assistance which will collectively receive 80% of Canadian aid.  The list includes many extremely unequal upper/middle-income Latin American countries such as Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. This was again, moving away from the Liberal CIDA policy of having smaller aid projects sprinkled around every corner of the earth (so everyone would know how amazing Canadians are, clearly) to consolidating development into a few key areas (of course, aligned with broader Canadian interests).

Well, what exactly are those other Canadian interests? This leads to the second shift, which is probably the most telling and controversial out of all the changes – that CIDA would be subsidizing public-private-NGO partnership pilot projects in South America and Africa. In other words, CIDA would be basically disbursing aid money through the CSR branches of Canadian mining companies along with NGOs.

Colombia, as usual, being one of the most unequal, poor, and violent countries in the region fit beautifully into this scheme. With the apertura economica or “economic opening” of Colombia under former President Alvaro Uribe and the beating back of the rebels from formerly marginal areas in the countryside rich in minerals/the “pacification” (read: counterinsurgency campaign) of the countryside, Colombia’s resources were ready for Canadian extraction. To make a very very long story short, Canada signed a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, Colombia made the list of the top 20 “priority” countries for CIDA, and the largest producer of gold in Colombia is a Canadian corporation, Gran Colombia Gold, which has been accused of having ties to paramilitaries. I leave it to you to make what you will of those four things and how related or not they are to each other.

CIDA has also been accused of tinkering with Colombia’s mining code, and industrializing and handing over to foreigners a gold and mining industry that has historically been run by low-income artisanal miners.

Here is a little gem from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA)’s report on the Canadian extractive sector in Colombia:

The report cites reliable sources that link ten Canadian companies in Colombia to the genocide of indigenous Colombians, to complicity in eight murders and one attempted murder, to other significant military/paramilitary repression, to large-scale displacement, and to environmental destruction on a massive scale, as well as to union-busting, strike-breaking, and worker exploitation.

… Never before have Canadian companies in Colombia been denounced as so destructive. They are now open to criminal charges of genocide, murder, complicity in murder, environmental damage, displacement of indigenous populations, and the violation of labour rights.

So what does this CIDA merger mean for Colombia? Probably what it will mean for other countries who also have, for better or for worse, a growing Canadian presence – aid will be more explicitly in the service of the Canadian extractive sector, and all of its alleged associated abuses, and not the ‘people’, to put it bluntly. However, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that aid was ever about ‘the people’. Until 2008, most of Canadian food aid was tied. Afghanistan was an aid priority because we invaded and occupied it. The extractive sector has had huge influence historically over Canadian interests in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Aid has always been a political tool for furthering Canada’s political and economic interests and making us look good with respect to sensational issues such as extreme poverty and war. To romanticize the era of Liberal peacekeeping and a ‘poorest of the poor’-centred CIDA is to deny that, to a certain extent.

CIDA under the Liberals was arguably just as bad as under the Tories, the question is one of representation and symbols. Under Harper, CIDA is no more because what CIDA stood for made no sense to him; aid to him should be about explicitly furthering Canadian economic/political interests. Under the Liberals, this was mostly the same except it was couched in a sinister and self-congratulating discourse of humanitarianism, benevolence, and how kind and wonderful Canadians are. However, many countries which CIDA focuses on, don’t need aid. Colombia is rich in resource and has one of the strongest economies in Latin America; however it’s rural communities exist in an almost feudal state of exploitation by mining companies, local and national oligarchs, guerrillas, neo-paramilitary groups, the army, and drug cartels. Whether it’s CIDA or the FARC, many communities in Colombia are just told about how they should be run, and never given true self-determination. What these communities and nations need, in my view, is a fundamental structural change in power relationships; that would be a discussion that really gets at the heart of poverty in somewhere like Colombia. But this has been absent from the debate about CIDA’s merger, which you would think would have something to do with poverty. The discussion is about what CIDA means to Canada. The discussion is about how some of us are not comfortable with what the Tories are doing which is being explicit about something that, actually has always been quite Canadian – making our charity all about what benefits us, and not those who we give it to.