Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper sold the country’s mining industry to business executives at the Summit of the Americas on Saturday.
30 nations are gathering in the seaside town of Cartagena in Colombia where the war on drugs and Cuba’s inclusion in the club are high on the agenda, but the event has been marred by a bomb explosion and a prostitution scandal involving the US secret service.
Canada.com reports Harper has vowed to increase the country’s mining investment in Latin America adding “resource development has vast power to change the way a nation lives:”
Mining contributed $50 billion to the country’s GDP in 2011, he said, and provides “well paying” jobs for more than 300,000 Canadians.
Mining accounts for more than one-fifth of Canada’s exports and has close to $200 billion in assets throughout the world, he said.
Sixty per cent of the world’s exploration and mining companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
“In other words, in Canada, we know this industry well.
Continue reading at Canada.com
2 Comments
Daniel
mining is a good industry(and there are a few pre-development projects in BC that are at par with the environment(Kamloops(but within 1 mile of a city, plus dust), Vavenby, west McKenzie), as in not on a major fish river/lake), but when you ignore the local environment so some foreign billionaire mining company can lay waste to rivers and lakes(uncontrolled tailings run offs and possibly draining fish bearing lakes to be a tailings pond(as per reported speculation)) you end up with blood for profit.
Canada’s mines are promoted as being in a “stable, non-violent country”.
The mountain tops(to get at coal easily) being blasted off in the eastern U.S. are highly destructive to whatever is below them(debris fills in the valleys) in order to maximize profits, while ignoring safety(pay a small fine for the environment and workers injuries/deaths and do no jail time).
Look at the tar oil sands and the cancer spreading through the natives who eat fish from the rivers. Look at the large solidified sulfur blocks at the tar sands. Some Environmental rules have caught up(recycle waste water), but kind of too late.
President Obama(Democrat) will approve the oil pipeline to the U.S. as soon as the billionaires present a pipeline path that does not go through a major water aquifer(pipeline is approved for Oklahoma to Texass). Republicans(U.S. Republican congress) have some major investments in the pipeline and stand to make a very large profit from the approval. Canada’s Harper is a Republican and WikiLeaks showed he did what G.W. Bush said to do.
Oil from the tar sands will never be below $65 per barrel, otherwise no profit in production. And the oil going to Texas will only be sold to foreign locations and Canada still will lose out on profits, as Canada is not building new oil processing facilities that can process tar sands to fuel.
President Obama(Democrat) is working to ban ‘oil speculators’, who drive up oil prices based on just trading barrels of oil and not actually buying oil to use/process.
Saskatchewan is proposing ‘small’ nuclear power plants for exporting of power. No earthquakes and many unoccupied locations. British Columbia banned all nuclear power/mining due to the coming Cascadia earthquake within the next 200 years.
Fracking(done by dumping tens of thousands of gallons of undisclosed chemicals into bore holes, underneath ‘now flammable’ water tables) is causing earthquakes in the U.S., As the fissures get lubricated by undisclosed chemicals and then cause sub-ground slips. The bore hole casing can not always seal from natural gas bubbling up into the water table via the new cracks. Natural gas prices have nose dived from over supply and a warm winter.
The Republicans 40 year war on drugs is a failure and has lead to many deaths from the drug cartels in most countries below the U.S.A. Legalization removes the Prohibition flawed mentality.
Obama(the linked article is biased to a republican view) does not want legalization of drugs “YET”, as a slowly rebuilding economy(from G.W. Bush’s destruction of it), leads to drug problems from people who have lost all hope at life and have resorted to theft to support their destroyed life. Some Western States/Provinces are busy trying to legalize Marijuana to reduce the scourge of hard drugs. Meanwhile the alcohol and pharmaceutical lobbys continue to donate to politicians, as well as creating propaganda commercials to keep Marijuana banned.
William
I wish in the U.S. we would know this industry better. Need to get the Obama Administration out for that to happen.