By Jen Moore
Published on Monday October 15, 2012
An indigenous protest in Panama.(February, 2012)
The Harper government’s trade agenda is front and centre this parliamentary term as the Conservatives seek to open new markets.
While coverage of Asia-Pacific and EU agreements dominate public debate, other bilateral agreements have been quietly making their way through Parliament. The House of Commons trade committee recently passed legislation to implement the Canada-Panama free trade agreement that could come before the House for third reading as early as this week.
As in other parts of Latin America, Canada has considerable interests in Panama’s mining sector, and as MiningWatch told the trade committee during recent hearings, the free trade deal is stacked in favour of mining firms at the expense of indigenous rights and environmental protection.
Ensuring greater legal stability for the Canadian mining industry in Panama means locking in a regulatory regime that has proved ineffective at preventing harm to the well-being of people and their living environment. It gives Canadian companies access to a costly international dispute settlement process to challenge pretty much any government decision they don’t like.
In other parts of the region, where Canadian mining companies have access to similar trade and investment agreements, they have not hesitated to threaten or launch such lawsuits. Such is the case in El Salvador, where Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining is suing the government for tens of millions of dollars after failing to obtain an environmental permit, a case which is before the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington. The case has cost El Salvador $5 million (U.S.) to date, enough to provide one year of adult literacy classes for 140,000 people. Regionwide, a third of the 137 pending cases before ICSID relate to natural resources, and half are against Latin American states, up from three cases pending before the same tribunal 12 years ago.
Meanwhile, mining-affected communities are not afforded such guarantees. The environmental side chapter of the Canada-Panama FTA is a non-binding declaration, which relies on political will for its implementation. This political will is as questionable in Panama as it is in Canada, with the Canadian government’s open antipathy to environmental concerns and environmental groups. Recently, we have seen Canadian mining companies undermine legal environmental protections — with the support of Panamanian government institutions — and the Panamanian state violently cracking down on recent indigenous protests over mining activities.
For example, a group of Canadian and Chilean consultants working in the name of Vancouver-based Corriente Resources — now a Canadian subsidiary of a Chinese consortium — has been operating in western Panama without the consent of representative indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé organizations that administer the region, and without any licence from Panamanian authorities. Traditional Ngäbe-Buglé authorities have accused the consultants of fomenting divisions, spreading malicious rumours, and supporting particular local electoral candidates — and have declared them personas non grata.
The Ngäbe-Buglé, Panama’s largest indigenous population, has also recently staged massive protests in opposition to changes to state-led mining reforms. In January 2012, one protester and one bystander were killed when police initiated a brutal crackdown on a Ngäbe-Buglé blockade.
The lack of effective channels for peaceful dispute resolution in Panama and the government’s lack of compliance with promises and agreements it has made with the Ngäbe-Buglé have resulted in a loss of credibility of the governing regime and loss of confidence in the political will to genuinely solve existing problems. Nonetheless, a representative of Corriente Resources testifying to Parliament about the Canada-Panama FTA claimed, “Canadian industry, in our experience, is generally well received by people in Panama and particularly in the Ngäbe-Buglé comarca.”
Toronto-based Inmet Mining has a large copper project in northern Panama and has also claimed before the House of Commons committee to be a good corporate citizen. But its efforts to obstruct environmental protection measures, taking advantage of weaknesses in the Panamanian regulatory and justice system, put the company’s claims in question. In particular, the company sought a constitutional injunction against the creation of a protected area in the district of Donoso where it’s operating, within the highly biodiverse Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and with an average rainfall of five metres per year.
The Panamanian Supreme Court overturned this injunction in July 2011, but only announced its decision a day after the Panamanian Environmental Authority approved the company’s environmental licence in late December 2011. Later, in April of this year, an administrative tribunal, under a magistrate who was named by, and is a former adviser to the current Panamanian president, suspended the protected area status.
This project would also entail the displacement of a number of Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous communities and, according to a recent CBC report, lacks the prior consent of indigenous peoples. In early 2012, Martín Rodríguez, a local community leader, told CBC reporter Mellissa Fung that: “People who are working for the mine turned up in our community and explained that at some point everyone would have to be evicted, because they say the lands here are part of the mining concession.” When community members refused to leave, Rodríguez said Inmet tried to gain their favour through other means: “They (Inmet) say they are going to give us a health centre and a school, but I don’t want that from them. As a leader, I can see through that. How much destruction and pollution is there going to be? Schools and health centres, that’s the government’s responsibility.”
In the context of such conflicts, proposals to consider banning open-pit mining or suspending mining development have gained high-level attention in Panama. In early 2011, the national ombudsman was among those calling for a moratorium on mining until the country could strengthen its institutions. A national survey carried out around the same time found that 67.7 per cent of Panamanians were opposed to mining in the country, and 68.8% of Panamanians disagreed with pro-mining legal reforms. In 2012, the Ngäbé Buglé declared a prohibition on mining within their administrative area, or Comarca.
Implementing the Panama-Canada Free Trade Agreement under these conditions, therefore, is tantamount to giving Canada’s seal of approval to a discredited political and regulatory regime that is failing to protect democratic expression or protect the lives and living environment of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Panamanians. At the same time, it shores up already favourable conditions for a conflict-ridden industry — so much so that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that protecting and promoting investment, and not opening markets, is the main objective, with no consideration for the well-being of affected communities and the environment.
Jen Moore is Latin America program co-ordinator for MiningWatch Canada.
continue reading: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1271936–prime-minister-harper-s-free-trade-strategy-endorses-conflict-ridden-mining-industry
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