[R-G] Shame on Canada, Coup Supporter

[Anthony Fenton]

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2009/07/09/ShameOnCanada/

Today: Friday, July 10, 2009
Shame on Canada, Coup Supporter

Zelaya: Enemy of Canada?
Why have we sided with the Honduran military? Mining profits.

By Ashley Holly
Published: July 9, 2009

TheTyee.ca

For the first time in decades, the world's eyes are on Honduras, a  
tiny country many Canadians know for those little stickers on exported  
bananas and the surplus of coffee it floods onto the global market  
each year. The world is less aware of the ongoing role that the  
Canadian government and Canadian mining companies play in pushing many  
Hondurans further into poverty.

Now that the world is watching, it's a good time to reveal these  
secrets.

On Saturday, July 4, at the impromptu meeting of the Organization of  
the American States, Canadian Minister of State of Foreign Affairs for  
the Americas Peter Kent suggested President Jose Manuel "Mel" Zelaya  
not return to Honduras. It's an interesting stance for Canada to  
assume, considering that most of the international community has  
condemned the coup in Honduras.

Moreover, following violent clashes between the military police and  
demonstrators awaiting Zelaya's return this past Sunday, Kent held  
Zelaya responsible for the deaths of two demonstrators by the military  
government.

Prior to these comments, Canada had remained relatively silent on this  
issue. But while most other counties have cancelled their aid to  
Honduras in protest of the coup, Canada has not. Why is our democracy  
suddenly in the business of supporting a military coup?

Capitalizing on hurricane devastation

The answer begins with Canada's reaction to the last crisis in Honduras.

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In 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept through much of Central America and  
especially ravaged Honduras, where thousands of people were killed and  
millions were displaced. Already the second poorest country in the  
Western Hemisphere, Honduras was now struck with over $3 billion in  
damages, a loss of social services such as schools, hospitals and road  
systems. Seventy per cent of its agricultural crops were destroyed.  
Nothing so devastating had ever hit Honduras.

Canada was quick to respond to the cries for help following Hurricane  
Mitch, with a 'long-term development plan'. Canada offered $100  
million over four years for reconstruction projects. These grandiose  
aid packages made Canada look like a savior. However, attached to this  
assistance was the introduction of over 40 Canadian companies to  
Honduras to assess opportunities for investment. This hurricane  
offered a strategic economic opportunity for Canadian investment in  
Honduras.

The Canadian government, as it officially stated this year, considers  
mineral extraction by Canadian mining companies one of the best ways  
to "create new economic opportunities in the developing world".  
Shortly after Hurricane Mitch weakened the Honduran state, Canada and  
the United States joined to establish the National Association of  
Metal Mining of Honduras (ANAMINH), through which they were able to  
rewrite the General Mining Law. This law provides foreign mining  
companies with lifelong concessions, tax breaks and subsurface land  
rights for "rational resource exploitation".

'We have lost everything'

"They crave gold like hungry swine," Uruguayan journalist Eduardo  
Galeano has written of multinational mining firms. I thought of those  
words on a recent drive through the open pit San Andres mining  
project, recently sold by the Canadian company Yamana Gold to another  
Canadian company, Aura Minerales. When I'd finished my tour, I was  
convinced the social, economic, environmental and health costs of open  
pit mining practices far outweigh the supposed benefits, and that the  
resource exploitation practiced by certain Canadian companies is  
anything but rational.

I got chills driving through the abandoned village of San Andres. What  
were once homes and schools had been bulldozed into mounds of crushed  
adobe and rock. Where ancient pine trees stood, there now were deep  
craters, accessible by the nicest highways I had seen in Honduras.

But a local resident at the end of one of those roads told me: "We  
have lost everything." The mine had displaced him from his home, and  
he was now without clean water to drink or fertile land to sow.

Currently, Canadian companies own 33 per cent of mineral investments  
in Latin America, accumulating to the ownership of over 100  
properties. Export Development Canada contributes 50 per cent of  
Canadian Pension Plan money to mining companies, which offered upwards  
of $50 billion in 2003. Goldcorp alone has received nearly one billion  
dollars from CPP subsidies. Although EDC is responsible for regulating  
Canadian industry abroad, it has been accused of failing to apply  
regulatory standards to 24 of 26 mining projects that it has funded.

In February 2003, nearly five hundred gallons of cyanide spilled into  
the Rio Lara, killing 18,000 fish. The mine in San Andres uses more  
water in one hour than an average Honduran family uses in one year. In  
that same year, mining companies earned $44.4 million, while the  
average income per capita in Honduras in 2004 was just $1,126USD.

Zelaya's anti-mining stance: payment due

As the man at the end of the road tried to explain to me, mining is  
not development for people who live around these mines. He speaks for  
thousands of others -- a base of support aligned with the ousted  
President Zelaya. In 2006, Zelaya decided to cancel all future mining  
concessions in Honduras.

Which would appear to explain, at least in large part, why Canada  
stands virtually alone in the hemisphere in supporting the Honduran  
military's ousting of Zelaya. The Canadian government, and its friends  
in the mining industry, are using the coup as an opportunity to plant  
their feet deeper into the Honduran ground.

In his role as minister of state for foreign affairs, Peter Kent once  
declared that "democratic governance is a central pillar of Canada's  
enhanced engagement in the Americas."

Apparently, his instructions from Ottawa have been revised.



Ashley Holly is a Canadian student conducting research in Honduras.