Unveiling Canada's Role in Chile’s Environmental and Political Conflicts [View all]

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Unveiling Canada's Role in Chile’s Environmental and Political Conflicts
By Cyril Mychalejko

Source: Toward FreedomWednesday, March 21, 2012

http://www.zcommunications.org/unveiling-canadas-role-in-chile-s-environmental-and-political-conflicts-by-cyril-mychalejko

A new report reveals the Canadian mining industrial complex's responsibility for social discord and environmentally-destructive policies in Chile's Patagonia region.

“Far away, on the southern cone of South America in Chilean Patagonia, exists one of the most beautiful, still-virgin territories on Earth. There, an intense struggle is taking place that most Canadians have never heard of, but that intimately involves the Canadian mining industry, the Canadian government, and millions of Canadian pensioners and investors,” notes Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow in the report's introduction.

The report, Chilean Patagonia in the Balance: Dams, Mines and the Canadian Connection, asserts that Canada's mining industry, which leads the world in mining investment with more than half of its assets in Latin America, accounts for 33 percent of electricity demand in Chile while advantageously exercising enormous influence in setting government policy there.

The report focuses on the Aysén region, which has seen protests and social discord since the announcement that the hyrdroelectric “development” plan would move forward last May. The project will potentially affect 12 of Aysén’s major rivers and involve five dams on the Baker and Pascua Rivers.