Another Canadian Mining Company Faces Criminal Allegations

OCCRP

A subsidiary of the Canadian mining company, Gabriel Resources, is under investigation in Romania for money laundering and tax evasion. According to The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Romanian prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC). It holds a license to exploit the largest open-pit gold mine in Europe. The project has been stalled in recent years amid widespread protests throughout eastern Europe, mainly from people concerned about its environmental impact.

           

These photos show the kind of environmental mess created by mining which has gone on in the area since the time of the Romans. (l.) An old mine machine crumbles into dust. (r.) Acid rock leakage seeps from a drainage pipe. Gabriel says it will clean things up because it is committed to "responsible mining and sustainable development."  (Photos by Gabriel Resources.)

The proposed mine is no stranger to controversy. Thousands of Romanians have been protesting in recent months against what they believe is an environmentally risky project, possibly plagued by political corruption, as well. Mine officials have said little publicly, except to claim they are not the direct targets of the investigation.

RMGC has also strongly denied accusations against it in Romania that it falsified certain maps of the area. It has launched a defamation suit to counter the accusations but does not elaborate on them further.

The parent company, Gabriel Resources, is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It owns over 80% of RMGC, the rest by the State of Romania. Gabriel believes it can still extract more than US$24 billion dollars worth of precious metal at the ancient mine site in an environmentally responsible way, creating thousands of jobs at the same time.

(OCCRP is an investigative reporting agency designed to help residents of Eastern Europe and Central Asia "better understand how organized crime and corruption affect their lives.")

(My e-mail to Gabriel Resources, requesting further comment and clarification, has gone unanswered.) l.p.

Related: "Gabriel Resources Gold Plans Suffer Setback, as Romanian Parliament Rejects Mining Law"

The Harperites Approve Yet Another Tarsands Mine, Thumbing Their Noses at Mother Earth and First Nations People.

The Canadian Press 

Shell Canada's Jackpine oilsands mine expansion plan has received the go-ahead from Ottawa, despite the environment minister's view that it's "likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects." Details here.

A New Study Hints at Further Trouble Ahead for Earth's Embattled Forests

^{by Larry Powell}

Trees around the world, including places like Canada's boreal forest, are dying from drought induced by our changing climate - and have been for years. This has been recognized in peer-reviewed studies, including one by a team of experts at the University of Quebec, published in the respected journal, NatureClimateChange, two years ago.

The Canadian Rockies. PLT photo

But a more recent study, this one reported in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research suggests further trouble ahead, this time in another eco-system. This time, a team of US researchers analyzed the relationship between growth and climate on the six most abundant subalpine tree species (growing on the higher slopes) in California's Sierra Madre mountains - and how that relationship evolved for well over a century. 

In an e-mail to PLT, one of the researchers, Christopher Dolanc of the University of California, Davis, states, "Increasing drought-stress may eventually stunt their growth. Two of these species, mountain hemlock (l.) and western white pine, are common in mountains in Canada."


The study concludes, "Although predictions of future precipitation trends are uncertain, drought stress appears to already be increasing. If this trend continues, radial growth is likely to be inhibited for most or all species in our study. Trees growing where snowpack is deep may be least likely to suffer reduced growth."

Farm Groups on the Canadian Prairies Want Ottawa to Penalize Railways for Grain Shipment Backlog

Winnipeg Free Press

Prairie farm groups frustrated by delays in shipping grain this fall want the federal government to do more to penalize rail companies that don't deliver crops in a timely way. Details here.

Surplus grain stored on a 
Manitoba field. PLT stock photo.

PLT Slams Manitoba for its Blasé Attitude Toward Arsenic

by Larry Powell

Why is the Government of Manitoba clinging to its monumentally callous practise of releasing arsenic into the environment?

After all, the deadly nature of the poison is hardly a deep, dark secret.

Have Premier Selinger and his Minister responsible for the environment, Gord Mackintosh, never heard of the Borgias? They're the infamous Italian family who rose to power in the Church, using arsenic to murder people for their money and property. And that was way back in the middle ages. 

Known even then as "The King of Poisons," a single dose the size of a pea was said to dispatch a victim with "violent abdominal cramping, diarrhea, vomiting and shock." 

Has no one with our provincial government ever read the classic, groundbreaking book, "Silent Spring?" It was written back in the 60s, but has well stood the test of time. In it, its highly-respected author, Rachel Carson reminded the world that arsenic found in chimney soot in England two centuries before, was carcinogenic. It caused cancer. Carson wrote further, "Epidemics of chronic arsenical poisoning involving whole populations over long periods are on record. Arsenic-contaminated environments have also caused sickness and death among horses, cows, goats, pigs, deer, fishes and bees." 

Yet the Manitoba Government will not budge from its decision to allow the Town of Virden, in the southwest, to release arsenic it has captured from the town's drinking water supply into Gopher Creek, a tributary of the Assiniboine River. That river, in turn, flows through many communities downstream, including Brandon and Winnipeg.

The government has stubbornly dismissed repeated pleas by a concerned resident of the area, John Fefchak, to find a method of disposal for this "captured" arsenic other than simply dumping it back into the environment. Sadly, his repeated letters-to-the-editor on this issue, seem to be falling on deaf ears. The province continues to cling to the outdated notion that the arsenic levels involved are so small, there is no cause for concern - that "the solution to pollution is dilution!"

This assumption is, at best, just plain unscientific.

For example, an American molecular toxicologist, Joshua Hamilton, recently stated that those who ingest only 10 parts per billion (ppb) over a lifetime, an incredibly tiny amount, "increase their risk of disease substantially." (Manitoba’s water standards allow 10 ppb each day. Virden has yet to meet that standard.)

And, in 2011, a team of American university researchers reported the results of a study of almost 12 thousand men and women in Bangladesh. It found a relationship between arsenic exposure and death from heart disease, "at a much lower level of exposure than previously reported."

Even Health Canada, not always the staunchest defender of the public health, saw fit to cut back some time ago on the amount of arsenic it allows in drinking water. 

Meanwhile, Manitoba, by contrast, maintains an attitude respecting this deadly poison which can only be described as strangely cavalier.

l.p.
Published in the Brandon Sun.
Related: Writer Steps up Fight to Protect Water Resources.

Belo Monte Justice Now! Please Sign Petition (Video)

Will Typhoon Haiyan Change World Attitudes? Don't Hold Your Breath! (Letter)

Dear Editor,

You have to wonder how many more monster storms it's going to take before the world takes meaningful action on climate change. Just one example is Haiyan, the "super-typhoon" which devastated vast areas of The Philippines this month. It was the biggest storm to hit land, ever! 

A poor Filipino man living and working right here in my home community of Neepawa apparently lost as many as 30 members of his family in this horrible tragedy. As the storm was raging, his country's Chief Climate Negotiator was making a tearful appeal at a UN conference in Poland. He pled for an end to the "madness," of climate change. He asked that we turn away from our addiction to fossil fuels, which is the root-cause of it all. 

Many climatologists remain reluctant to link any single storm, including this one, to climate change. But they have repeatedly warned that warmer oceans brought about by rising global temperatures, stoke the ferocity of both wind and waves during what they call these "severe weather events." As a result, the waves hitting the shore in The Philippines were more like a tsunami than a surge, the wind more like a thousand tornadoes than a typhoon.

Sadly, neither that brave negotiator's plea for change, nor the hunger strike he began at the time, seem likely to make a dent on a world community bent on maintaining a society fuelled by hydrocarbons, and little else. 

Japan has backed away from its targets for greenhouse gas reduction, saying they are just not realistic. Our own Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq, has simply added to Canada's shameful litany of lies and deception over the years, by proclaiming at the same UN conference, that a carbon tax wouldn't be effective (even thought the preponderance of evidence points to the contrary). And Australia, a nation which has suffered so severely from the effects of climate change itself, has just elected a Conservative government, which has vowed to repeal an existing carbon tax there.

Yet, even as I look out my window and watch the semis rolling by as unrelentingly as ever, I can't afford to give up! After all, as an older person, I  have surely contributed to this mess, myself. So it is now up to me to help fix it.  

And, damn it, with your help, we will!

Larry Powell
Neepawa, Manitoba, CA
(A version of the above has now been published in the Roblin Review and Neepawa Banner.)

P.S. I'd like to thank fellow members of the Green Party of Manitoba for supporting my resolution at our recent Annual General Meeting in Winnipeg. The Party agreed to extend heartfelt and deepest sympathies to the many surviving family members and friends of victims killed by the typhoon.  
We also adopted a resolution calling on the Government of Manitoba to "substantially increase" its pledge of $200 thousand dollars to the Filipino relief effort. The resolution noted, "If this provincial government can afford to pay a wealthy corporation like Ikea some $8 million to set up shop in Winnipeg, it can surely be more generous to a country so devastated by this super-storm. We mustn't forget that many Filipinos live and work here in Manitoba, giving to this province's economy and social life. It's time that Manitoba gave back to the Philippines."