DO CANADIANS CARE ENOUGH?

After this morning's talk by a speaker from otrosmundos organization I am reluctant to tell people here in Mexico that I am from Canada. Thanks to our Canadian mining companies we Canadians are perceived as polluters and bullies. NAFTA processes can enable Canadian mining companies to overrule Mexican domestic environmental laws and local community concerns; Canadian executives take advantage of this instrument for exploitation. People have died and will die in future because our companies make money the bottom line.

With our Canadian mining expertise and some respect for local conditions we could earn respect. Bill C-300, a private members bill tabled by Liberal Member of Parliament John McKay, proposed giving the government authority to investigate complaints against resources companies operating abroad and to withhold public money from offenders. The bill was narrowly defeated.

But my guess, along with that of M.P. John McKay, is that parliament will have to return to this issue. Canada as a whole is losing too much respect from the behaviour of the mining companies. As our speaker from otrosmundos detailed the damage Canadian mining companies have done, I thought back to my childhood in Cobalt. Cobalt was the world's biggest silver producer back in the early 1900's. It was the strike that led to many others in the Canadian shield and was where Canadians had their first lessons in hard rock mining. Our house was set on the hill above what we called "Poison Lake." It was a gray green pond of sludge. As children we played along the edges of the lake and on top of the mounds of tailings. Today I read that arsenic was associated with the cobalt ore from which the silver was extracted. Water around Cobalt is polluted. Children are warned away.

When my wife and I moved to Belleville, friends who had heard what local doctors were saying told us to install a water purifier in our home. There are mines to the north of Belleville. In past studies have shown a high level of arsenic in the Moira River. A close friend wonders whether it was Belleville water that caused her cancer.

When I lived north of Lake Huron near Espanola, Anishnabe men who had worked in the Sudbury mines talked about the damage done them from years drawing in the dust from the mines. We catch on late about the damage done our own people and to the environment. Having some sense of what it means to run a environmentally safe mining site do we forget our learning? Does it make sense to have no corporate accountability and export death to other areas of the world?

To see who was absent from the Bill C-300 vote and to learn how members voted go to http://howdtheyvote.ca/vote.php?id=940