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Thank you, Stompin’ Tom Connors. We needed you – Globe and Mail Editorial (March 7, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Stompin Tom Connors’ Mining Songs: http://republicofmining.com/2013/01/21/stompin-tom-connors-wiki-profile-and-mining-songs/

He wore a cowboy hat and banged his heavy-heeled cowboy boot on a piece of plywood while singing his twangy songs in small-town bars, but Stompin’ Tom Connors was more than just another lanky country-and-western act. The beloved East Coast singer and songwriter, who died on Wednesday at age 77, was an outspoken Canadian nationalist long before that became a cool thing to be. Stompin’ Tom was a pioneer, and he will be missed.

These days, Canada isn’t scared to be a little loud and proud. Politicians push patriotic buttons and endlessly recite their devotion to “hard-working Canadians.” Advertisers shamelessly (and successfully) plug our country and its natural beauty, and play up Canadians’ adventuresome and ribald sides. But Stompin’ Tom was doing that a long time ago, celebrating the end of a hard week’s work with famous lyrics like, “The girls are out to bingo and the boys are getting’ stinko/ And we’ll think no more of Inco on a Sudbury Saturday night.”

Nationalistic to the point of being a curmudgeon, Connors fought with the Junos for nominating Canadian performers who made their name and sold most of their music outside Canada, and he battled with the CBC over its refusal to broadcast a concert he’d taped for that purpose.

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Stompin’ Tom Connors dies at 77: A look back at a Canadian country icon – by Greg Quill (Toronto Star – March 7, 2013)

 

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Stompin Tom Connors’ Mining Songs: http://republicofmining.com/2013/01/21/stompin-tom-connors-wiki-profile-and-mining-songs/

Stompin’ Tom Connors, the lanky, cranky country music legend who extolled Canada’s pastoral and working-class virtues in song has died. He was 77.

Stompin’ Tom Connors , the lanky, cranky country-folk music legend who extolled Canada’s pastoral and working-class virtues in song for more than 40 years in saloons, festivals and concert halls across the country — all the time railing against a global music industry that he considered had betrayed the nation’s character and song treasury — has died. He was 77.

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NEWS RELEASE: Quebec Polls Show Little Public Support for Mining Industry – Canadian Boreal Initiative Calls for Substantive Reform of Mining Practices

 OTTAWA, March 5, 2013 /CNW/ – In the midst of the annual convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and just in advance of a third attempt at reforming the Quebec’s mining law in the National Assembly, polls by Léger Marketing released today by the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI) show that:

the overwhelming majority of Quebec voters disagree with current laws that give the rights of mining companies precedence over rights of private landowners, Aboriginal communities and municipalities, Quebecers feel that protection of the environment, and community and property rights should be prioritized in the mining reform legislation,

a large proportion of voters believe that mining royalties are inadequate; and that a province-wide independent evaluation of the economic, health and environmental impacts of uranium mining should be completed before the province approves any uranium mining proposals.

Suzann Méthot, CBI’s Regional Director in Quebec, said: “These surveys clearly show that that the mining industry needs to take immediate action to bring itself into the 21st century. It can start by ending their defense of the outdated idea that the rights of mining companies should supersede those of individuals, communities, and the environment.”

Poll Highlights

Private Property and Community Rights:

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Children Toil in India’s Mines, Despite Legal Ban – by Gardiner Harris (New York Times – February 25, 2013)

http://www.nytimes.com/

KHLIEHRIAT, India — After descending 70 feet on a wobbly bamboo staircase into a dank pit, the teenage miners ducked into a black hole about two feet high and crawled 100 yards through mud before starting their day digging coal.

They wore T-shirts, pajama-like pants and short rubber boots — not a hard hat or steel-toed boot in sight. They tied rags on their heads to hold small flashlights and stuffed their ears with cloth. And they spent the whole day staring death in the face.

Just two months before full implementation of a landmark 2010 law mandating that all Indian children between the ages of 6 and 14 be in school, some 28 million are working instead, according to Unicef. Child workers can be found everywhere — in shops, in kitchens, on farms, in factories and on construction sites. In the coming days Parliament may consider yet another law to ban child labor, but even activists say more laws, while welcome, may do little to solve one of India’s most intractable problems.

“We have very good laws in this country,” said Vandhana Kandhari, a child protection specialist at Unicef. “It’s our implementation that’s the problem.”

Poverty, corruption, decrepit schools and absentee teachers are among the causes, and there is no better illustration of the problem than the Dickensian “rathole” mines here in the state of Meghalaya.

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Light on facts, heavy on patriotism, focus groups help hone NRCan advertising – by Bruce Cheadle (Maclean’s Magazine – February 18, 2013)

http://www2.macleans.ca/

OTTAWA – Focus-group testing on what the Harper government calls its Responsible Resource Development campaign found the advertising to be light on facts but uplifting and patriotic, according to a government-commissioned study.

The fruits of that taxpayer-funded labour will again be on display this spring as a second wave of ads — designed to persuade Canadians of “the importance and impact of Canada’s energy sector” — hits the air.

Natural Resources Canada has budgeted $9 million in the current 2012-13 fiscal year for ads that show a cross-section of resource industries in a job-friendly and environmentally sensitive light. It’s a carefully calibrated exercise.

Conservatives have been courting controversy for more than a year with a high-octane battle over pipeline development and changes to environmental laws designed to speed up major resource projects, including oil sands extraction.

Last summer, NRCan hired Leger Marketing to fine-tune the government’s proposed advertising campaign. The project included a national telephone poll of 2,000 respondents and two separate rounds of focus groups.

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Barrick ad campaign counters Dominican criticism – by Joachim Bamrud (MiningWeekly.com – February 12, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

SANTO DOMINGO (miningweekly.com) – Canada-based Barrick Gold has started a media campaign in the Dominican Republic to counter often repeated, but false, statements about its 2009 contract to develop the $4-billion Pueblo Viejo gold mine.

Pueblo Viejo, which is 60% owned by operator Barrick and 40% by Canada-based Goldcorp, is the largest foreign investment in the Dominican Republic. It started production in January and is expected to account for as much as 15% of Dominican exports over the next decade.

However, during the past two weeks Dominican legislators – including from the ruling PLD party – have requested that the contract be revised as a result of the increase in international gold prices since the contract was negotiated.

“We expect their executives to make a move so that the government and Barrick examine the contract [and] that they sit with the government to find a solution that benefits the country,” Abel Martinez, the head of the Dominican congress, said last week. “But this revision is urgent and the Chamber of Deputies has made the firm decision to act in this regard.”

Alexander Medina, the head of the government’s mining agency, last week also joined the ranks of those demanding a contract revision.

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Rain forest serial killer Barbie – by Peter Foster (National Post – February 12, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

How NGOs brought Mattel and other giants to heel

The anti-Keystone XL protest planned for the White House this weekend is just part of an ongoing NGO-led global battle against economic development, and jobs.

Nobody is arguing against prudent science-based protection of the environment. However, NGO campaigns tend not merely to be based on wild misrepresentation, but also coercive, ideologically driven, and economically challenged. And yet big corporations appear 100% behind them, or at least are far too scared to speak out.

Although the current focus of NGO demonization is Keystone XL, the forest industry has been under siege for years, and by exactly the same groups as are trying to take down the oil sands. These groups include the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose self-righteous gurus were put under the microscope by the Post’s Claudia Cattaneo on Tuesday. Also prominent in the forest war-for-poverty are Greenpeace and the WWF.

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Empowered green groups gain upper hand in pipeline battle – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – February 12, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

WASHINGTON — Meet the people on the winning side of Canada’s oil discount — the U.S. environmental activists who have wreaked havoc in the oil sands industry by trashing its practices and shutting it out of new markets by stalling proposed pipelines such as Keystone XL.

They include Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Danielle Droitsch, Anthony Swift of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which bills itself as the United States’ most effective environmental action group backed by 350 lawyers; and Jason Kowalski and Ben Wesser, with 350.org, a grassroots organization that uses protests and social media to stop climate change.

They are uncompromising, empowered and feel good about their progress in capping the growth of fossil fuels — particularly those from Canada.

Agree with them or not, their record is astonishing: They have outmanoeuvred the powerful oil lobby and stalled the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas; they have managed to blame emissions from oil sands’ fuels for U.S. climate disasters such as Super Storm Sandy; and they believe they are on the cusp of strangling oil sands growth.

In interviews in the slick downtown Washington base of the NRDC, the activists were unapologetic about the distress their campaign is causing in Canada — and particularly in Alberta, where pipeline bottlenecks are depressing the price of oil, cutting into company revenues and forcing provincial budget cuts.

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Donors closing wallets to Canadian charities who work with CIDA, mining companies – by Rick Westhead (Toronto Star – January 31, 2013)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Plan Canada, who works with Iamgold, is part of Canadian International Development Agency’s program pairing NGOs with Canadian mining companies.

A leading Canadian charity says it is considering abandoning a controversial development project funded by the federal government and a Canadian mining company because of pressure from its donors.

Plan Canada, one of three NGOs involved in a Canadian International Development Agency project that pairs NGOs and the government with mining companies, says the mining sector’s poor image threatens to tarnish its own reputation. Some Plan donors have complained the mining companies have enough money to fund their own social programs and that Plan shouldn’t be partnering with them.

“Would we try it again? Probably not,” Rosemary McCarney, Plan’s president, said in an interview with the Toronto Star. “It’s upsetting to donors. People are mad. The reality is that working with any mining company is going to be a problem. There are going to be (employee) strikes and spills. Is it worth the headache? Probably not.”

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Time to fight back against Hollywood’s [mining and oil/gas industry] misinformation – Gwyn Morgan (Globe and Mail – January 21, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Hollywood hates big business. Movies portraying corporate leaders as greedy villains have been common for decades, but the film that inspired today’s movie makers had its roots in British Columbia. That was the 2003 documentary The Corporation, written by a University of British Columbia law professor, Joel Bakan.

It featured a procession of leftist luminaries, including Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky, uttering views such as that corporations turn citizens into “mindless consumers of goods that they do not want” and that “the problem comes from the profit motivation.”

Hollywood’s attack has escalated to the point where many films feature an anti-corporate “moral” message, the most popular of which portray industries as uncaring pillagers of the environment. The plot of James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar featured a greedy mining boss intent on destroying an ancient forest inhabited by native humanoids on the distant planet of Pandora to mine a precious mineral called unobtanium.

Animated films for children also follow the lead; consider 1992’s FernGully: The Last Rain Forest, in which fairy folk help stop a logging company from destroying their forest home.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH NEWS RELEASE: Eritrea: Mining Investors Risk Use of Forced Labor

Canadian Firm Failed to Adequately Address Issue

JANUARY 15, 2013

Click Here For: Hear No Evil: Forced Labor and Corporate Responsibility in Eritrea’s Mining Sector

(Toronto) – International mining firms rushing to invest in Eritrea’s burgeoning minerals sector risk involvement in serious abuses unless they take strong preventive measures. The failure of the Vancouver-based company Nevsun Resources to ensure that forced labor would not be used during construction of its Eritrea mine, and its limited ability to deal with forced labor allegations when they arose, highlight the risk.

The 29-page report, “Hear No Evil: Forced Labor and Corporate Responsibility in Eritrea’s Mining Sector,” describes how mining companies working in Eritrea risk involvement with the government’s widespread exploitation of forced labor. It also documents how Nevsun – the first company to develop an operational mine in Eritrea – initially failed to take those risks seriously, and then struggled to address allegations of abuse connected to its operations. Although the company has subsequently improved its policies, it still seems unable to investigate allegations of forced labor concerning a state-owned contractor it uses.

“If mining companies are going to work in Eritrea, they need to make absolutely sure that their operations don’t rely on forced labor,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, business and human rights senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “If they can’t prevent this, they shouldn’t move forward at all.”

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Canada-Eritrea Mine, Bisha, Used Forced Labour, According To Human Rights Report – by Mike Blanchfield (The Canadian Press/Huffington Post – January 15, 2013)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

OTTAWA – A highly critical human rights report released Tuesday is shedding new light on the darker implications of the Conservative government’s ambitions for Canadian mining companies in Africa.

The report by Human Rights Watch says Vancouver-based Nevsun Resources Ltd. (TSX: NSU) failed to ensure that forced labour was not used in the construction of its mine in Eritrea, the hermit-like pariah state on the Horn of Africa.

Though the company was concerned when the problems first came to light and tried to investigate, it was blocked by its state-owned partner, says the report by the New York-based agency. Nevsun said it has since instituted rigorous screening practices at its Bisha mine project and taken steps to ensure that forced labour is no longer used.

“When Nevsun began building its Bisha mine in Eritrea in 2008, it failed to conduct human rights due diligence activity and had only limited human rights safeguards in place,” Human Rights Watch said.

The Eritrean government insisted that Segen Construction Company, a local Eritrean contractor, carry out construction of the mine in 2008. Segen — owned by the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice — routinely exploits conscript workers that the government assigns to it, the report alleges.

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Nevsun accused of turning blind eye to forced labour – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – January 15, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

JOHANNESBURG — For the conscripts who were ordered to work at a Canadian gold mine in Eritrea, the conditions were nearly unbearable: 12-hour shifts, six days a week, with poor food and no toilets, for a salary of less than $15 a month.

When one conscript left the mine without permission to attend a grandparent’s funeral, he was captured and imprisoned for four months, and then forced back into his unit.

These are among the allegations in a hard-hitting report by Human Rights Watch, to be released Tuesday, which criticizes the Canadian mining company for failing to prevent the use of forced labour at its mine. The report is based on interviews with former workers at the mine, who later fled the country.

The Vancouver-based company, Nevsun Resources Ltd., responded to questions from The Globe and Mail by saying that it expresses “regret” for any forced labour at its mine in Eritrea. It said it doesn’t permit conscripted labour at its mine today, but doesn’t know whether its subcontractor used conscripts in the past.

The allegations highlight the ethical and moral challenges for Canadian mining companies when they operate in countries with long histories of human rights abuses. And it raises the question of whether Canadian companies can develop mines in countries such as Eritrea without becoming complicit in those abuses.

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To Stop Climate Change, Students Aim at College Portfolios [coal, oil and gas stocks] – by Justin Gillis (New York Times – December 04, 2012)

http://www.nytimes.com/

SWARTHMORE, Pa. — A group of Swarthmore College students is asking the school administration to take a seemingly simple step to combat pollution and climate change: sell off the endowment’s holdings in large fossil fuel companies. For months, they have been getting a simple answer: no.

As they consider how to ratchet up their campaign, the students suddenly find themselves at the vanguard of a national movement.

In recent weeks, college students on dozens of campuses have demanded that university endowment funds rid themselves of coal, oil and gas stocks. The students see it as a tactic that could force climate change, barely discussed in the presidential campaign, back onto the national political agenda.

“We’ve reached this point of intense urgency that we need to act on climate change now, but the situation is bleaker than it’s ever been from a political perspective,” said William Lawrence, a Swarthmore senior from East Lansing, Mich.

Students who have signed on see it as a conscious imitation of the successful effort in the 1980s to pressure colleges and other institutions to divest themselves of the stocks of companies doing business in South Africa under apartheid.

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