Hey Folks,
As you’re probably aware by now, Canada is an insanely corrupt kakistocracy run by a gang of bumbling crooks.
If you’ve just come to this awareness recently, I can assure you that this isn’t new. If you think that Canadian corruption commenced with that pretty boy ninny everyone loves to hate, I can assure you it did not.
Case in point: Canada’s “foreign aid” to the Sahel region of Africa, which has been in the news lately.
The other day, the Globe and Mail reported:
Canada will maintain its embassies and aid programs in the coup-plagued Sahel region of West Africa, even as several other Western countries pull their diplomats out, the federal government says.
France, Sweden, Denmark and Norway have announced the closings of some or all of their embassies in the Sahel in recent months, as violent insurgencies have grown bloodier, peacekeepers have withdrawn and Russian soldiers have expanded their presence. But Canada is determined to stay, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told The Globe and Mail.
The Sahel countries will remain a favoured target for Canadian foreign aid, after Ottawa spent more than $1.8-billion on aid to the region over the past six years, Ms. Joly said, speaking at the end of her African visit last month, which included two days in Ivory Coast, a country bordering on the Sahel.
“After Haiti, per capita, this is the region we’re most investing in in the world,” she added.
Let me say that last part again for you in case you didn’t catch it..
Melanie Joly, speaking on behalf of the Canadian government, said: “After Haiti, per capita, this is the region we’re most investing in in the world.”
Wow. Your mama must be proud, Melanie. Be sure to put that on your resume.
When I heard this fucked-up news, my first thought was to wonder how this story is connected to Canadian mining interests. My second thought was to wonder how many people will die protecting those interests.
If you didn’t know, the Sahel region is the third hottest front of WWIII, after Palestine and Ukraine. It’s a proxy war between Russia and France.
I think a lot of Canadians are in denial that we’re in the middle of WWIII, but there’s major fighting happening on three continents. Do you really need the weatherman to tell you the weather?
Think about what thist means. If France is pulling out and Canadians are left there hanging out with a gang of glorified goons around deeply unpopular mining projects enabled by corrupt regimes that local people want to overthrow, what do you think is going to happen? How do you think this story is going to end? With or without bloodshed?
But Melanie Joly don’t give a fuck, she crazy.
Anyway, I’m pleased to announce that I was able to find an expert on the subject of Canadian mining, who will place the current situation in its broader political and historical context.
That expert is an anti-mining activist named Francis Bueckert, who also happens to be my brother.
I’m always encouraging him to write, because he’s good at it and because he has a ton of specific knowledge of a very important and rarely-discussed subject: the Canadian mining industry.
Enjoy!
Crow Qu’appelle (a.k.a. Anton Bueckert)
CANADA’S TWO-FACED COLONIAL CAPERS: THE AFRICA EDITION
by Francis Bueckert, Founder and C.E.O., Cloud Forest Coffee
If you have been paying attention, you will know that there are big changes happening in the Sahel region of Africa right now. To understand what is going on, it is necessary to understand a little bit of the historical context that these countries are emerging from.
As we all know most of Africa was colonized by European powers in the 19th century. What many do not seem to realize is that colonialism, and the economic exploitation that accompanied it, did not really end so much as evolved into a different form.
Much of West Africa continues to be dominated by the mechanisms of global neocolonialism. Europeans still directly control the currency of many African states. Currencies like the CFA Franc, which is the official currency of 14 African countries, is a colonial currency originally forced on them by the French in 1945. This currency was pegged to the Franc, and is currently pegged to the Euro.
This means that African states who use it have no sovereignty over monetary decisions. Any decisions made by the European central banks are automatically applied to the African countries that use it.
The countries that use the CFA Franc are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Chad.
The economic effect of this is that it creates a massively unequal and dependent trading relationship with Europe that blocks African economic development.
It has impeded local industries from developing and has made these countries reliant on exporting raw materials rather than making value added products.
Popular dissatisfaction with this status quo has led to a wave of African nationalism and understandable anti-western sentiment. This, in turn, has led to new governments in several of the countries in the region such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
The new governments are explicitly critical of the ongoing French presence in Africa. However, France isn’t the only western country conducting nefarious business in the Sahel region of Africa.
There is another country operating in West Africa whose malign influence is less obvious.
Over the past few decades, this country has cashed in on the state of neocolonial dependency imposed by Europe and the United States by slyly increasing its economic hold over one of West Africa’s most valuable resources: gold.
That country is Canada.
It’s no secret that the Canadian mining industry is a global behemoth. Around 75% of mining companies are based in Canada, and Canada-based companies own majority shares in two of the three largest gold mines on the African continent.
Due to the reasons stated above - mining has been toted by Western institutions as the recommended road to development of African economies. The role of extractive industries in the economic development of African states plays out strongly in Burkina Faso and Mali.
After nearly twenty years of neoliberalism, the promises of mining for economic growth and poverty reduction have not matched the rhetoric. Mining was oversold as a development engine by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Mining is a capital intensive industry, not a labour intensive one, meaning it is provides few opportunities to actually meaningfully build up the local economies and workforce.
Popular anger has sprung out of the growing misalignment between the expected, and often over-hyped, economic benefits from mineral exploitation and the actual benefits, as well as often negative impacts on local communities.
Canadian companies have played a huge role in this. It is no exaggeration to say that without aggressive Canadian mining firms going global in the early 1990s, neither Burkina nor Mali would have a significant gold mining sector today.
Established Canadian miners such as Iamgold (market cap was over $4 billion but has recently fallen to $3.1 billion partly in response to the Mali crisis) started out as tiny companies exploring prospective areas in Mali, a country just opening up to foreign investment in the late 1980s. Twenty years ago industrial scale gold mining in these countries was non-existent. Lax mining codes, including low royalty rates and tax holidays, were designed to stimulate investment in mining across much of liberalizing Africa from the early 1990s. Mali and Burkina, along with Tanzania in the east, led the pack.
Let’s look specifically at the example of Mali. In 2021, Canadian direct investments in Mali totalled nearly $1.5 billion. These investments are entirely in the mining sector and makes Canadian mining companies some of the largest players in Mali. However, a big risk faced by mining firms throughout Africa is an increasing tide of resource nationalism intended to enhance the domestic benefits of mineral extraction. African countries want their fair share of the benefits being reaped by these, often Canadian, mining companies. States including South Africa, Ghana, and Zambia and emerging ones including Tanzania, Mali, and Burkina have re-examined and revised their mining codes recently.
Governments seek higher mineral rents and greater local impact (e.g., processing, promotion of indigenous capabilities, employment, community infrastructure, etc.). These countries are tired of getting a bad deal, and they have started doing something about it. This leads us right up to the recent wave of coup d’etats that happened in the Sahel region.
Relations between the Sahel nations and Western countries have deteriorated since the military coups in Burkina Faso in 2022, Mali in 2020 and Niger in 2023. Over the past few months many Western countries have announced that they will be closing their embassies in the Sahel region of Africa. France, Sweden, Norway and Denmark are just some of the countries that are closing their embassies in Mali and Burkina Faso.
Canada, however, will not be following suit.
According to the Liberal government,Canada will maintain its embassies and aid programs in the coup-plagued Sahel region of West Africa. This announcement comes as violent insurgencies have grown bloodier, and peacekeepers have withdrawn. But Canada is determined to stay.
The Sahel countries will remain a favored target for Canadian foreign aid, after Ottawa spent more than $1.8-billion on aid to the region over the past six years.
No wonder they don't want to jump ship and abandon their investment!
CANADIAN TAX DOLLARS ARE SUBSIDIZING RISKY NEO-COLONIAL MINING PROJECTS IN AFRICA
There's some interesting themes to explore here.
One is the fact that Canada now primarily only delivers 'development assistance' in areas where the mining corporations are hoping to gain access. Hence Canadian tax dollars are subsidizing the mining industry abroad.
This goes back to the Harper years in the early 2010s, the Canadian government increasingly integrated commercial self-interest into its foreign aid program. Rather than just giving money to poor countries in the name of charity, Canada increasingly sought to deliver development assistance to areas where they sought to increase a foothold for Canadian extractive businesses.One needs look no further than The Canadian Investment Fund for Africa (CIFA) to see an example of this in practice. It is the largest initiative of the Canada Fund for Africa program, which was established as part of Canada’s role in the G8’s 2003 Africa Action Plan.
The Canadian government has allocated around $100 million to CIFA, an investment which has generated “returns of capital and profits to Canada in excess of $30 million.” While the extraction of profit is not often associated with Canadian development initiatives, the sectors identified by the CIFA overview reveal that the primary goal of the program was not the fostering of African self-sufficiency, but in the Government of Canada’s own words, “privatization [of] business and other services (20.00%),” “industrial development (30.00%),” and “mineral prospection and exploration (30.00%).”
Not only is this very duplicitous, it is yet another way that taxpayer money is being transferred to corporate interests. Many Canadian development initiatives in the region, including the $20 million West Africa Governance and Economic Sustainability in Extractive Areas program (WAGES), are implemented in order to train local Africans in skills which they will need to work on sites owned by Canada-based mining companies, thereby increasing profits for these companies. Token “corporate responsibility” initiatives are often implemented alongside these massive privatization programs.These “corporate responsibility” programs are established with the purpose of branding Canadian development aid, which is almost always tied to trade liberalization in the targeted country, as progressive.
Similarly, security collaborations with regional governments are meant to promote the image of Canada as an international peacekeeper while simultaneously stabilizing resource-rich regions for extractive investment. Canada is playing the role of the super-villain two-face: trying hard to present itself as the noble, respectable benefactor - yet beneath the surface a hideous monster is lurking. And the local populations in these Sahel region countries can smell a rat.
Clearly a storm is brewing - one that will bring the populations of these countries into conflict with these Canadian mining companies. Ecological factors are exacerbating the situation. These areas are dealing with water shortages - which will bring mining companies in conflict with the citizens who may be hoping to use that water for their crops and, you know, drinking. Those of us who live in water-rich countries might not grasp the degree to which access to water is a matter of survival in a notoriously dry desert region.
Severe drought (including this year) create conditions for food and livelihood insecurity particularly as the majority of the population remains tied to the land and rivers via subsistence or cash-crop farming, herding, and fishing. Yet the Canadian Federal government has spoken - they have no plans of backing down.
They view this region of Africa as their golden goose, and they intend to stay - whether they are wanted there or not. This will create a dangerous situation, one that has a high likelihood of leading to bloodshed.
For now, Canadian mining investments in Burkina Faso and ALL of West Africa continue to rise—alongside “the increasing poverty of most of the population.”
"Follow the money, and it will lead you to the truth."--My father
Looks like you just done did that, and did it very well indeed.
After Haiti 🤣🤣🤣 and she’s proud of that 🤯🤯🤯