A leading
candidate for president in Peru’s April election “took his campaign” to
Vancouver, reported the city’s leading daily. Earlier this month
Alejandro Toledo — who served a previous term as president — met mining
officials, investment bankers and journalists, telling them his
government would improve the climate for mineral exploration and mine
development.
“One of the reasons why I have interrupted my
campaign,” Toledo told the press, “is that I wanted to transmit the
message to potential investors — investors who are already involved in
Peru, and who are potential investors, that we are interested in their
investments.”
For some, Peru is a Canadian success story. Before
1990, no Canadian mining company operated in Peru. Now Canadian
corporations dominate the country’s mining sector, operating a number of
major projects. According to Bloomberg, “more than 200 junior mining
exploration companies, mostly Canadian, are searching for reserves of
crude oil, natural gas and other resources across the country.”
As an illustration of the size of Canadian mining
investment in Peru, in late 2006 ScotiaBank announced plans to expand
its operations in the country to do more business with mining clients.
The Toronto-based bank is the third largest in Peru and only a small
part of the $5 billion Canadian companies have invested in the country.
Where some see Canadian success, others see problems,
at least for many Peruvians. “In Peru,” noted McGill University
professor Daviken Stuenicki Gizbert, “40 percent of conflicts involving
local communities are over mining. The majority of the mining sector in
Peru is Canadian.” In a short period in 2008 Canadian resource companies
in Peru were responsible for a number of socially damaging events; an
oil and gas company entered an area inhabited by a nomadic tribe that
refused contact with the outside world; a mine destroyed pre-Columbian
carvings; the government declared a state of emergency over fears that
arsenic, lead and cadmium from a mine near Lima could pollute the
capital’s main water supply.
In October 2008, Zuniga, the president of the Achuar
indigenous group FENAP, told a local radio: “We, as indigenous people,
reject the Canadian company Talisman. We do not want them working in our
territory. We want the Peruvian state to respect us and the armed
forces to stop helping the company.” In the Spring Achuar leaders
traveled to Calgary to tell Talisman to stop drilling in their territory
because it caused ecological harm and social conflict.
The world’s largest gold miner, Toronto-based
Barrick, has also been embroiled in a number of conflicts in Peru.
“Violent conflict at Barrick Gold’s Tierina in North Central Peru,”
blared a 2005 Canadian newspaper headline, as the story reported two
protesters killed. A year earlier Reuters reported “thousands of
protesters angry at a court decision to waive a $141 million tax payment
levied on Canadian miner Barrick Gold Inc. clashed with riot police in
Peru’s central Andes on Monday, the latest in a run of anti-mining
protests in the mineral-rich nation.”
The most high profile mining conflict in Peru took
place earlier in the decade at Vancouver-based Manhattan Minerals $240
million project in Tambogrande, a small town in the north of the
country. This open pit gold mine would have forced half of the town’s
16,000 residents to relocate while creating only a few hundred jobs.
Godofredo Garcia Baca, a leader of the anti-mining opposition movement,
was shot and killed under suspicious circumstances.
The federal government has supported many individual
mining projects in the country and has worked to provide the industry
with a profitable investment climate. Manhattan Minerals obtained its
concession in Tambogrande six months after participating in a Department
of Natural Resources trade mission to Peru and the Canadian
International Development Agency (CIDA) partnered with Barrick on a
reforestation project near the company’s Lagunas Norte mine. In 2002
CIDA began a six-year $9.6 million Mineral Resources Reform Project to
provide technical assistance and technological support to the country’s
Ministry of Energy and Mines. At the end of 2008 CIDA added $4 million
to the project and the agreement was extended until 2012. The official
goal of the Mineral Resources Reform Project is “development of
activities oriented to the consolidation of the institutional capacity
of the sector, which means the services provided by the Ministry of
Mines and Energy, and to contribute to the generation of greater
confidence in the Ministry and its regional offices.”
CIDA’s push to improve the prospects for Canadian
miners through the Mineral Resources Reform Project warranted a visit in
early 2008 by the minister of international cooperation. Embassy
Magazine reported: “Ms. [Bev Oda] … arrived in Peru meeting with the
Latin American nation’s energy and mines minister, as well as Canadian
and Peruvian mining companies and NGOs to discuss mining sector reform.”
Last year CIDA chose Peru as a “country of focus” and
the federal government signed a trade agreement with Peru largely
designed to improve the prospects for Canadian investors. According to
Foreign Affairs, “an investment chapter in the Canada-Peru FTA
[free-trade agreement] locks in market access for Canadian investors in
Peru and provides greater stability, transparency and protection for
their investments.”
In truth the FTA — with environmental and labour
safeguards that are “even weaker than NAFTA’s” — might be better
characterized as subverting meaningful democracy. The FTA is designed to
remove any future Peruvian government’s ability to change mining
regulations or expropriate properties of Canadian companies.
For Canadian officials pushing the interests of
mining companies Toledo’s visit to Vancouver was definitely a sign of
success. But, many Canadians may disagree. Instead of “success” they may
see imperialism and Canada following in the U.S.’ footsteps.
Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and the Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. For more info: http://yvesengler.com
