Yves Engler
Despite rhetoric about providing aid to the poorest, the Harper Conservatives have worked assiduously to ensure that Canadian corporations profit from Africa’s vast mineral resources, rather than the continent’s people.
Even widespread criticism of their operations has failed to dampen the Conservatives’ support for Canada’s many mining interests in Africa. Canadian mining companies have been accused of bribing officials, evading taxes, dispossessing farmers, displacing communities, employing forced labour, devastating ecosystems and spurring human rights violations.
But more important than the specific instances of abuse, which I detail in my forthcoming book Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, the mining industry contributes little to sustainable economic development. Instead it vacuums up resources to benefit wealthy people, very few of whom live in Africa.
The mining industry’s other reps
The mining industry has found a set of loyal lobbyists in the Harper government. Indifferent to the deleterious impacts of the sector, International Trade Minister Ed Fast has included numerous mining executives in his delegations to the continent, and former foreign minister John Baird focused his visits to Africa on countries where Canadian resource companies sought business.