Colombian Connection: Canadian Neocolonialism in the Global South

[Joe Shlabotnik]

...Operating well below the radar of mainstream news media, some of Canada's largest energy firms - in parity with US-backed national governments - are operating with impunity in Colombia, a nation already afflicted by a nearly 50-year civil war.

Unwelcome to most in the region, corporations like Pacific Rubiales Energy (TSX: PRE), which produces more than 40 percent of crude oil in Colombia, have run roughshod over organized labor, indigenous communities and the environment. It has become directly implicated in surreptitious union-busting activities and even assassinations that threaten an already fragile social fabric. Yet despite reportedly pervasive ecological damage and attacks against workers and basic human rights, such large enterprises repeatedly have ignored the provisions of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement - an August 2011 document that at least nominally supports freedom of association and the right to collective negotiation.

In a seminal piece of research titled "Profiting from Repression: Canadian Investment in and Trade with Colombia," award-winning writer and international affairs expert Asad Ismi provides a 240-page breakdown of corporatist neocolonialism in South America. The report "links ten Canadian companies in Colombia to the genocide of indigenous Colombians, to complicity in eight murders and one attempted murder, to other significant military/paramilitary repression [and] to labour union-busting, strike-breaking and worker exploitation." To date, it is the only document of its kind.

A major focus of Ismi's work are primary Canadian oil producers Colombia-Pacific Rubiales, Gran Tierra, Talisman and Petrominerales - and other mining outfits such as Gran Colombia Gold, Eco Oro Minerals and Cosigo Resources. These companies have, at one time or another, been found in violation of basic human rights or as perpetrators of structural violence related to hyper-capitalist resource extraction. ...

From: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18175-colombian-connection-canadian-neocolonialism-in-the-global-south

Link to the report "Profiting from Repression: Canadian Investment in and Trade with Colombia": http://www.pasc.ca/en/article/report-profiting-repression-canadian-investment-and-trade-colombia

[COLGATE4]

1. I anxiously look forward to all the

cries of "Canuk go home".