Mining and Oil Sector Image – Page 21

Asbestos: Killer product or toxic PR? – by Mark Bonokoski (Toronto Sun – July 10, 2011)

July 11, 2011

Mark Bonokoski is a columnist for the Toronto Sun, the city’s daily tabloid newspaper. mark.bonokoski@sunmedia.ca

Back in May, an international consortium of doctors, scientists, labour leaders and health organizations wrote a rather pandering letter to Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe.

And, in that letter, they appealed for “His Excellency” to back off reopening two old asbestos mines in the country he has already impoverished by murderously turning Africa’s certified bread basket into a certifiable basket case.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s name was not mentioned, but it was implied, citing the Canadian government’s support for the reopening of the Jeffrey asbestos mine in Quebec as the kind of “reprehensive and retrogressive” action that Zimbabwe should not emulate.

The World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization and the International Trade Union Confederation — claiming to represent 176 million workers in 151 countries — have all called for a global end of the use of any form of asbestos, citing it has led to the deaths and chronic disabilities of thousands of innocent victims from cancer and the respiratory disease of asbestosis.

A deadly disdain for science [Harper and asbestos] – by Peter McKnight (Vancouver Sun – July 9, 2011)

July 10, 2011

www.vancouversun.com
pmcknight@vancouversun.com

The Conservative Party’s stance on asbestos -which drew worldwide condemnation -is just the latest example of the federal government’s embrace of an alternate reality bereft of scientific evidence and morality

In the atmospheric film Silent Hill, a dead mining town is forever shrouded in fog and falling ash, while those unfortunate enough to visit also find themselves forever trapped in an alternate reality, where science and morality have no hold.

It’s an apt metaphor for Quebec’s dying and deadly asbestos industry, as it slowly suffocates in a chrysotile cloud. But even more so, it’s an apt metaphor for the federal government’s asbestos policy, just the latest example of the Conservatives’ embrace of an alternate reality bereft of science and morality.

That policy received worldwide condemnation recently, after Canada became the only country in the world to oppose listing chrysotile asbestos under Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention, a multilateral treaty covering the importation of hazardous chemicals. Listing a substance on Annex III triggers the Convention’s Prior Informed Consent Procedure, which requires exporting countries to inform importers of the hazards that exist, and of the precautionary measures they ought to take in handling the substance.

Mining the Congo: Golden opportunity [Banro Corp.] – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – July 10, 2011)

July 10, 2011

Jennifer Wells is a feature writer with the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. No stranger to the mining industry, Ms. Wells won the 1999 National Business Book Award for Fever: The Dark Mystery of the Bre-X Gold Rush as well as covering many other major mining stories.

TWANGIZA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Baraka Zihindula appears small for 13, sitting on his bum on the ground, in his royal blue school shorts and short-sleeved shirt. He’s worrying the earth with a stick in the distracted manner of adolescent boys everywhere as he tells his life story, a task that might seem inflated for a mere 13-year-old, until you learn Baraka’s life thus far has included six years of hard labour.

Baraka was 8 when he started panning for gold, working artisanally as a miner alongside his two brothers and his father, just one more family, invisible amid the million-plus informal miners who scrabble for a subsistence living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Baraka’s family lives in the village of Luchiga and every day, seven out of seven, the boys would accompany their father to the river. A little gold was found just about every day, Baraka says, and that little gold was converted to a little money and with that little money his mother was able to feed the family.

Sometimes the father would keep the boys working overnight.

Seated in the shade of a tree, a stone’s throw from the school he now attends, Baraka has kicked off his plastic sandals. There’s a light breeze, the air is fresh and Baraka looks handsome in his schoolboy uniform.

Canada’s stance on asbestos disgraceful – by Ruth Farquhar (Sudbury Star – July 4, 2011)

July 4, 2011

The Sudbury Star, the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Our government has once again given Canada a black eye internationally, refusing to put chrysotile asbestos on the hazardous list at the Rotterdam Convention two weeks ago.

At a time when work is being done to remove all traces of asbestos in the Parliament buildings and the official residence of our Prime Minister, we say it’s OK to export it without any kind of warning.

Actually, we stayed quiet at the convention and even when the United Nations confirmed our position, Environment Canada sent this email to the Toronto Star, “with regards to your question on Rotterdam, our previous response that our position at Rotterdam will be the same as our position in Canada, which is we promote the safe and controlled use of chrysalides still stands.”

I wonder if staff at environment Canada choked over that one. Given that Health Canada since 2006 has recommended that asbestos be put on the hazardous list, it’s unbelievable that we can’t put a warning label outlining the risks when we sell this deadly substance to countries such as India.

Even the dying and the doctor support chrysotile mining in Asbestos – by Julian Sher and Bill Curry (Globe and Mail – July 2, 2011)

July 3, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Digging in: The politics of asbestos mining

ASBESTOS, QUE. AND OTTAWA – Donald Nicholls remembers when the white fibres from the open pit mine that still dominates this town blanketed its streets like snow.

“You could leave tracks from the dust that fell overnight,” said Mr. Nicholls who started working in the mine fresh out of high school back in 1950. “It was much, much worse back then.”

He’s slowly dying of asbestosis, a respiratory disease brought on by inhaling those white particles. But like almost everyone else in town, the 79-year-old supports the reopening of the mine, allowing Canada to ramp up its export of chrysotile asbestos – a variant of the very mineral that is killing him.

In the face of widespread international hostility, Canada too has become an unabashed proponent of exporting a product linked to lung disease and cancer. The Conservative government’s decision last week to block an international agreement to restrict the sale of chrysotile incited condemnation around the world and across the country.

The Canadian Cancer Society called it an “unethical decision” that left it “shocked and embarrassed.”

Coltan a minefield in the Congo – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – July 3, 2011)

July 3, 2011

“Don’t just shock us. Make us understand.” — Jason Stearns, Congo watcher

So you want to see the minerals!” Edouard Mwangachuchu, senator, Democratic Republic of the Congo, quickly advances toward a cargo trailer situated high on a verdant emerald hilltop in Masisi Territory. It is a glorious day.

Masisi, in the Congolese province of North Kivu, is lush and agriculturally rich, rising in terraced steps more visually fitting the postcard pastures of today’s Rwanda, or possibly the rice plateaus of Vietnam, than the Congo, which often — too often — seems a desiccated and wretched place.

In Masisi the sweet peas are white, the lupines are purple, and the senator, in his straw hat and pink golf shirt, looks the part of the weekend farmer, which he is, crowing that he produces the finest Gouda cheese in all the Congo. The senator is also a mine operator of a modestly mechanized operation, and on this day he is in an expansive mood.

The lock on the cargo trailer is surprisingly slight, given the riches stored inside.

The Congo’s tin soldiers (Blood Minerals) – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – June 26, 2011)

July 3, 2011

“You’ll say I walked across Africa with my wrists unshackled, and now I am one more soul walking free in a white skin, wearing some thread of the stolen goods, cotton or diamonds, freedom at the very least, prosperity.” — Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

BISIE, CONGO—The figure stirs suddenly, rising on one elbow, eyes blinking out from the dark, hand-dug mine shaft. Rough-hewn post-and-beam construction frames the entrance to the pit, partly obscuring the small cot upon which the creuseur has claimed a moment’s rest, a break from the brain-dulling monotony of hacking at the rock face with mallet and chisel and then, by brute strength, hauling broken ore to the surface, toward the sunlight.

At midday the heat is searing, baking an endless vista of rubble painted in colours of titian and yellow ochre. The treeless moonscape is a 45-minute roller-coaster climb beyond the tiny town of Bisie, itself a nine-hour walk — for the fleet of foot — from the nearest road in the eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Bisie “mine” isn’t really a mine at all, but a cassiterite deposit that has enticed creuseurs like diggers to the Klondike. From pits that run to 100 metres deep and more, miners excavate the ore that ultimately will be smelted to tin by big players in the smelting game, players that reside outside of the Congo. The tin is used not just for cans and containers, but in considerable measure by electronics manufacturers for lead-free solders, forging the link between a mountain in the Congo and shopping malls thousands of kilometres away displaying the latest in smart phones and laptops.

Mining the Congo: From the Earth to the moon – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – June 25, 2011)

July 3, 2011

In the first part of the series Mining the Congo, Jennifer Wells recounts a trek through the Congo toward a remote, cratered mountainside where miners toil.

The heat of the day was coming on. Suspended above a smoky fire a meaty gnarl of antelope, the size of a small ham, twisted lazily. A group of women sat nearby, having lowered their heavy panniers, seeking a moment’s respite.

Mari stood in the umbra of the woodland, her sloe eyes, her round face, a funny little knit cap on her head, tatty pants under a blue and yellow floral piece of cloth that she had tied about her waist. Her pannier of cassava leaves lay at her feet.

Those eyes. They seemed to scan in slow motion before Mari swiftly and dismissively swept the back side of one hand across the palm of the other. “You will not make it to Bisie before nightfall,” she said firmly in Swahili, steadying her gaze not upon photographer Lucas Oleniuk, but upon my determinedly un-weary person. “You will have to sleep in the forest.”

Canadian mining firm threatens legal action against Peru- by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – June 27, 2011)

June 27, 2011

Canada’s Bear Creek Mining Corp. is threatening a legal challenge against Peru after its mining rights were revoked in a move that raises the risk for other resource companies doing business in the mineral-blessed South American country.

“We have done nothing wrong,” Bear Creek chief executive officer Andrew Swarthout said in a telephone interview on Sunday from Peru. The company has been working for more than a decade in Peru with some challenges, but Mr. Swarthout said this is the first time its mining rights have been pulled.

The Santa Ana mine was expected to produce about 47-million ounces of silver over its 11-year mine life and represented about 20 per cent of Bear Creek’s value, behind its flagship Corani project, also located in Peru.

Peru revokes licence of Canadian mining firm Bear Creek – by William Lloyd George (Globe and Mail – June 27, 2011)

June 27, 2011

As smoke rose from burning tires and torched security vehicles, heavily armed police confronted nearly a thousand angry anti-mining protesters walking the runaway of Juliaca’s airport in southern Peru, near Lake Titicaca. One protest leader called for the group to reclaim the airport. Others said it was too dangerous. Then a call came through from the protest leaders in the capital, Lima.

The government had given into their demands and agreed to revoke the licence for Canadian mining firm Bear Creek to open its Santa Ana silver mine in the area; as well, it halted all new mining concessions in Puno province for 36 months. The unrest ended with the agreement Saturday, narrowly averting a repeat of a bloody conflict the day before, when police killed at least five demonstrators at the airport.

While the breakthrough agreement stopped further bloodshed, it casts doubts on other resource operations in Peru, a nation that relies heavily on foreign investment and receives about 70 per cent of its GDP from the mining industry. Peru is South America’s fastest-growing economy, driven by surging commodity prices, but the rural poor have benefited little from mining and complain it contaminates their water and crops.

First a Gold Rush, Then the Lawyers – by Randal C. Archibold (New York Times – June 26, 2011)

June 26, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/

SAN ISIDRO, El Salvador — When a Central American gold rush brought a Canadian mining company here a few years ago, the company promised to stake a claim that would be as green as the lush hills.

The copious amounts of water needed would come only from the rain, not from the nearby Rio Lempa that is this country’s lifeline, the company said. Cyanide, a toxic chemical used to extract gold embedded in rocks, would be dispersed naturally, dried by sunlight in vast double-lined pools. Several hundred jobs could be created here, in one of the country’s poorest regions.

“No other mine in North America has gone to this level of environmental protection,” said Tom Shrake, the chief executive of the Canadian company, Pacific Rim, which is seeking to tap a vein that it says could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But when the government of El Salvador, facing mounting public concern over the consequences of mining, failed to grant the company the final permit it needed, Pacific Rim sought to extract a different kind of green: $77 million from the nation’s treasury as compensation for lost profits.

With asbestos, we are the Ugly Canadians – by Jeffrey Simpson (Globe and Mail – June 25, 2011)

June 25, 2011June 25, 2011

Billions of dollars will be spent over the next two decades to repair the Parliament Buildings. One reason for the repair: The buildings are full of asbestos, a cancer-causing substance that Canadians no longer use.

But we mine asbestos, we ship it, we make money from it, and we’ll use every diplomatic trick in the book to defend this odious practice. We are the Ugly Canadians.

The Harper government could care less. It vigorously defends mining asbestos because of one little corner of Quebec, near Thetford Mines, where the asbestos is mined and shipped to developing countries, mostly in Asia. Stephen Harper’s top Quebec minister, Christian Paradis, used to head the Thetford Mines chamber of commerce. Mr. Harper campaigned in the area and supported the mining. He spent part of Friday, St. Jean Baptiste Day, in Thetford Mines, thereby reinforcing his government’s political marriage to asbestos.

This week, the Ugly Canadians stood alone against the world in blocking the listing of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous chemical under the Rotterdam Convention.

Canada’s toxic asbestos trade – Toronto Star Editorial Comment – June 25, 2011

June 25, 2011June 25, 2011

The Toronto Star, which has the largest broadsheet circulation in Canada, has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion.

For years the federal government has been warned by doctors, environmentalists, unions, even Health Canada, about the deadly impact of asbestos. But Ottawa remains intransigent about curbing exports of this harmful mineral. Once again this week it opposed listing chrysotile asbestos on the United Nations’ list of dangerous materials. Once again it acted irresponsibly.

At a summit in Switzerland to discuss the Rotterdam Convention — a UN treaty on the international trading of hazardous substances — Canadian officials quietly blocked the inclusion of asbestos on the list of dangerous materials, joining such countries as Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The hypocrisy is staggering. The federal government has spent millions to clear its own buildings of this noxious material — including taking it out of 24 Sussex Drive to protect the Prime Minister and his family. Canadian companies, schools and homeowners have also removed asbestos from their structures. Yet we happily export it.

When less asbestos is best – Globe and Mail Editorial (June 24, 2011)

June 25, 2011June 24, 2011

What does the federal government have against a five-page form? That’s what its opposition to “listing” chrysotile asbestos – a hazardous material – under the Rotterdam Convention amounts to. Canada was wrong to block an emerging consensus in favour of listing at a Convention meeting on Wednesday, especially given the small restrictions involved in the listing procedure.

Chrysotile, of which Canada is the world’s fifth-largest producer, is a material that can be used to make cement. Can be used – most developed economies have forsaken it for other materials, because chrysotile contains tiny fibres that, if exposed, can lead to respiratory ailments and even cancer. But it is a cheap enough alternative that growing Asian countries are a growing market for the product. An Asian medical journal recently reported that it expects a “surge of asbestos-related diseases in the immediate decades ahead” as a result.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis said in the Commons last week that “scientific publications show that chrysotile can be used safely under controlled conditions.” We’re not sure which publications he’s referring to, but presumably not the ones read by Health Canada’s director-general for the safe environments program, when he recommended listing of chrysotile under the Rotterdam Convention in 2006; nor statements by the World Health Organization or the Rotterdam Convention’s review committee.