Canada–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations
Encyclopedia
Canada–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations concern the bilateral relationship between the countries of Canada
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
. In 2009, the D.R. Congo's Prime Minister, Adolphe Muzito
, reported that Canada "contributed enormously to the development" of his country, with 22 Canadian companies employing 13,000 persons in the energy and mining sectors.
DRC's rank among recipients of Canadian bilateral development assistance
has fluctuated between tenth and twenty-fifth highest since 1960, and Canada was ninth among country donors to the DRC over 1960-2009, with total disbursements of US$892 million (constant 2008 dollars) accounting for 2.8% of Congolese country-to-country aid receipts. Canada's bilateral aid included a total of US$84.5 mill. (constant 2008 dollars) in bilateral loans to the former Zaire during 1972 to 1987, however over 2003-2006, Canada provided Cdn.$79.1 mill. (US$56.9 m.) in bilateral debt relief to the DRC under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative
. In terms of aid via multilateral channels over 2000-2009, Canada contributed US$95 mill. to Bretton Woods institutions
on behalf of the DRC, while Canadian mining companies and consulting firms received US$103 mill. in investments, political risk insurance, and consultancy and procurement contracts from World Bank
group members over the same period. One third of the DRC's imports of second-hand clothing over the last two decades has come from Canada, and this commodity has comprised one-half of Canada's total exports to the DRC.
While the Canadian government provided in 2009 US$40 million in development aid to the DRC, Canadian companies held US$4.5 billion in mining-related investments there, making the DRC the first or second-largest African destination for Canadian mining activities at the end of the 2000s. The Government of Canada has reported 28 Canadian mining and exploration companies operating in the D.R. Congo between 2001 and 2009, of which four (Anvil Mining
, First Quantum Minerals
, Katanga Mining, Lundin Mining
) were engaged in commercial-scale extraction, with their collective assets in the DRC ranging from Cdn.$161 mill. in 2003 up to $5.2 bill. in 2008, and these companies were supported in 2009 by Canadian and Quebec public pension plan investments of Cdn.$319 mill.
First Quantum Minerals Ltd.
, a Canadian mining company active in the D.R. Congo since 1997, reported overall contributions amounting to 3.0% of the Congolese gross national income
in 2009, and while the company placed twenty-seventh among Canadian corporate social responsibility rankings in the same year, it closed all its Congolese operations during 2010, following a Congolese government revocation of one of First Quantum's exploitation permits, and the initiation by First Quantum and other stakeholders of international arbitration proceedings against the Congolese government. In 2010, Canada's temporary delay and abstention from a World Bank decision to cancel most of the D.R. Congo's external debt and complete the review of the DRC's Extended Credit Facility, was officially based on Canadian concerns over reform sustainability adversely affecting DRC's investment climate and development objectives. While Canada's actions drew criticism from the Congolese government, diplomatic relations were not deemed to have been impaired.
Canada also expressed concerns over the DRC's relations with Canadian companies, and the abstention was reportedly linked directly to First Quantum's legal proceedings.
In addition to a total of 2,200 Canadian military personnel deployed to Congolese and Zairean conflicts during 1960-1964 and 1996, individual Canadians have had significant roles in the history of the Congo, including:
Four fifths of the fissionable
uranium
and plutonium
used by the Manhattan Project
in the production of atomic bombs that were exploded over Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
, Japan
, in 1945 came from five thousand tons of Congolese and Canadian pitchblende
which was refined at the Canadian government-owned Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited
in Port Hope, Ontario
.
evangelical movement, arrived at Bunkeya, in Katanga, a centralized state ruled by Msiri; Msiri employed Faulknor and other missionaries as "errand boys", symbols of his influence, while Faulknor taught and converted a small group of redeemed slaves.
William Grant Stairs
(1863–1892), a Canadian born in Halifax, Nova Scotia
and educated at the Royal Military College of Canada
in Kingston, Ontario
, was a civil engineer, explorer and mercenary who was appointed by Belgium's
King Leopold II to lead an expedition
in 1891 of four hundred men which captured the Katanga (Shaba) copper territories for Belgium. Contemporaneous accounts of the expedition reported that during a confrontation, Katanga's king Msiri was shot dead and then decapitated, the head placed on a stake by Stairs's forces. Stairs then began reorganising affairs, appointing Msiri's son Mukandavantu (Mukanda Bantu) to replace Msiri, and securing the Congo State's authority over a fifty-mile radius. Stairs himself died of malaria only six months later while on trek to the coast, in Chinde
, Mozambique
, and was buried there. The Brethren missionaries including Faulknor made no attempt to obstruct Stairs's campaign and relied on the Belgian military following Msiri's defeat. Faulknor left Katanga in 1892, and returned to Canada. The Canadian Baptist Mission (Mission des Baptistes Réguliers du Canada) established a presence in the Congo in 1926, and had two missions in southern Léopoldville Province in 1946.
Possibly the earliest Canadian woman to live and work in the Congo was a Catholic missionary and book printer from Quebec
: Mère Marie-Bernadette (née Bernadette Beaupré) was born in 1877 in Saint-Raymond
, entered the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary
in 1894, and died in Boma, Congo Free State
in 1908, from trypanosomiasis
. On her departure for the Congo, Soeur Marie-Bernadette was destined for an orphanage to be founded at the mission station of Stanley-Falls
, however she was posted downriver at Nouvelle-Anvers instead, arriving there on 27 July 1900. Having received training in typesetting while at the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary institute in Vanves
, France
,
Marie-Bernadette was designated in 1901 by Égide De Boeck (1875–1944), the Scheut missionary and vice-director of the colonial boarding school at Nouvelle-Anvers, to undertake the printing and binding of the very first books to be published in the Lingala language
; these grammars, lexicons, religious tracts and hymn books were authored by De Boeck, and by Father Camille Van Ronslé. With a very limited supply of type, only one page could be printed at a time, however at least eight volumes in Lingala were published under Marie-Bernadette's guidance, beginning in 1903 with Mambi makristu [Things Christian] by Van Ronslé and Buku moke moa kutanga Lingala [Little book for reading Lingala] by De Boeck. One century later, Lingala, which De Boeck had constructed from elements of Bangala
and other Bantu languages including Bobangi, Mabale and Iboko, has 25 million speakers worldwide, and has become a lingua franca
in both the D.R. Congo and the Republic of the Congo
.
In Canada, church groups in Victoria and Ottawa contributed to the European condemnation of the atrocities committed by King Leopold II against Congolese slave labourers, in the form of a letter written to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier
, calling upon Britain to "secure to the people of the Congo Free State due protection and justice", and this public pressure ultimately led in 1908 to Leopold's relinquishment, and creation of the Belgian Congo
colony.
In 1939, the United States purchased 1,200 tons of uranium
ore from the Union Minière du Haut Katanga
's Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo
, that was warehoused on Staten Island
, New York City
. The Canadian municipality of Port Hope, Ontario
was site of the former radium
producer and, at that time, sole North American uranium refiner, Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited
, which between 1941 and 1946 provided a steady supply of refined uranium oxide to the Manhattan Project
. In 1942, the Canadian government acquired Eldorado, making it a crown corporation
in 1944. Eldorado's initial supplies were derived from uranium concentrates at Port Hope that had accumulated as tailings from its past radium operations, and, beginning in 1942, refined from newly-mined ore shipped from its re-opened Great Bear Lake
pitchblende
mine in the Northwest Territories
. Eldorado in addition refined at Port Hope the US's Congolese ore stockpile that had been shipped from the New York storage facility, and further shipments of ore from the Congo. The 1,100 tons of Canadian-mined uranium, and 3,700 tons from the Congo that were refined in Canada, along with 1,200 tons from Colorado
, comprised the six thousand tons of uranium oxide that formed the Manhattan Project's raw materials for the fissionable cores of the uranium-235
and plutonium-239
atomic bombs that were released and exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki
, Japan in August 1945, immediately killing an estimated thirty percent of Hiroshima's civilian and military population, and resulting in an estimated total of 293,000 fatalities in the two cities, from both the immediate blast and long-term radiation exposure.
The Belgian Congo became, after the Second World War, one of the first of Canada's commercial partners in Africa, the first trade post outside the British Commonwealth, with a trade commissioner posted in Leopoldville
in 1948, ranking it among Canada's top dozen trading partners; in the mid-1950s the Canadian company Aluminum Limited attempted to gain control of the construction of the Inga
hydro-electric power project at Matadi
on the Congo River
, however they "anxiously preferred to remain discreet" to avoid "antagoniz[ing] Belgian business interests".
The Royal Bank of Canada
partnered in 1957 with eight other international banks in furnishing a $40 million World Bank loan to the Belgian Congo for the building of roads. In their 1962 book Anatomy of Big Business, Libbie and Frank Park traced a direct connection from the Royal Bank's president and vice-president's directorship of Sogemines Ltd., a Canadian investment and holding company and Belgian subsidiary, to shared directorship in the Belgian parent conglomerate, Société Générale de Belgique
, which also owned the Congolese firm Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. The authors identified an extended network involving major Canadian corporations including Canadian Petrofina Ltd.
, Abitibi Power and Paper Company
, Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Ltd.
, Noranda Mines Ltd., and Dominion Steel & Coal Corp. Ltd.
, concluding that "[e]veryone is happy; everyone is scratching everyone else's back at a profit - and profits are extracted from the labor of Congo workers who up till recently have had nothing to say about the situation".
In July 1960, the newly appointed Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba
, made an official visit to Canada (Montreal and Ottawa), requesting Francophone technical assistance for his country, however financial assistance was turned down by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker
. During the ensuing Congo Crisis
, about 1,800 Canadians from 1960-1964 served among the 93,000 predominantly African peacekeepers with the United Nations Operation in the Congo
(ONUC), working chiefly as communications signallers and delivering via the Royal Canadian Air Force
humanitarian food shipments and logistical support. The Canadian participation stemmed more from overwhelming public opinion, and not decisive action on the part of the Diefenbaker government, according to historians Norman Hillmer
and Jack Granatstein
. However, Diefenbaker reportedly refused to comply with numerous public calls for Canada to provide humanitarian relief to 230,000 Congolese famine victims in South Kasai in 1961 ostensibly because "surplus foodstuffs should be distributed to unemployed persons in Canada" as a first priority. Two Canadians died from non-conflict-related causes, and, out of the 33 Canadians injured in the conflict, twelve received "severe beatings" by the Congolese forces. Although Patrice Lumumba dismissed the first incidences of these beatings, on August 18, 1960, as "unimportant" and "blown out of all proportion" in order for the UN to "influence public opinion", he attributed them a day later to the Armée Nationale Congolaise's "excess of zeal". Historians have described these incidents as cases of mistaken identity under chaotic circumstances, in which Canadian personnel were confused by Congolese soldiers with Belgian paratroopers, or mercenaries working for the Katanga secession. Only a quarter of Canada's signallers extended their six-month tours of duty to a full year, and Canadian forces reportedly found the Congolese to be "illiterate, very volatile, superstitious and easily influenced", including an instance where a Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel successfully persuaded Kivu Province's Prime Minister to accept a relief contingent from Malaysia by explaining to him that the Malaysians were capable of diverting bullets in flight away from their intended path. A recent study concluded that while the Canadian government "demonstrated a greater willingness to accommodate the Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba than other Western nations" and publicly did not side with either faction, it "[p]rivately [...] favoured the more Western oriented [President] Kasavubu". Canada's troops earned the trust of Joseph Mobutu
, the latter visiting Canada in 1964 as President of Zaire
, during which he acknowledged Canada's support in maintaining his country's territorial integrity.
Canada established formal diplomatic ties with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1965, with Ambassador J.C. Gordon Brown taking charge of the Canadian embassy in Léopoldville.
With funding from the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA), the Quebec firm Gauthier, Poulin et Thériault (later Groupe Poulin & Thériault) conducted an inventory of 5.2 million hectares of Zairois forest during 1974-1976. During the 1980s, Canada undertook a detailed inventory of Zaire's forestry resources with the aim of developing the sector, via the Service Permanent d’Inventaire et d’Aménagement Forestier (SPIAF).
In November 1996, the first deployment of Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team
(DART), along with 354 Canadian Forces
personnel, out of 1,500 originally committed, formed "Operation Assurance", with its mission to deliver humanitarian services to Rwandan refugees in eastern Zaire, as part of a Canada-led, United Nations-mandated African Great Lakes Multinational Force. Raymond Chrétien
, a nephew of the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
, who was Canada's ambassador to the United States and previously in Zaire
from 1978–1981, was appointed during November and December 1996, the UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Great Lakes Region; Chrétien's role was to help defuse the tension in the region, initiate a negotiation process for the repatriation of Rwandan and Burundian refugees in eastern Zaire, and to secure a ceasefire with the leader of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo
(ADFL), Mr. Laurent-Désiré Kabila
. Assisted under Canadian Forces Operation LEGATION, Raymond Chrétien consulted with Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko and with the leaders in Rwanda, Burundi, and neighbouring countries. While Chrétien did not meet with Laurent Kabila despite requests from the latter, the Canadian Lieutenant-General Maurice Baril
and leader of the multinational force did meet with Kabila in Goma in November 1996, discussing food airlifts for the Rwandan refugees in eastern Zaire. General Baril secured a promise from the AFDL to not fire on humanitarian relief aircraft in return for providing Kabila's forces with advance notice of these flights, however Baril's convoy of Joint Task Force 2
personnel was reportedly ambushed en route between Goma and Kigali, and had to be rescued by U.S. Apache and Tomahawk helicopters. Prompted in November 1996 by television images of the refugees, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
reported contacting world leaders to assemble an international military force of 15,000, including Europeans and Americans, under Canadian command, however Chrétien notes that the crisis resolved itself before a Security Council resolution had been obtained. Estimates of the number of Rwandan refugees in the eastern DRC varied widely, from France counting "700,000" to Germany's "500,000", Canada's "300,000 to 500,000", and the United States NGO, Human Rights Watch, assuming only a few tens of thousands. In mid-December 1996, both Raymond Chrétien and Maurice Baril recommended the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers, based on evidence of a mass repatriation of the Hutu refugees, and then-assistant deputy foreign minister Paul Heinbecker announced the Government of Canada's decision to end the mission on December 31. Despite these actions, according to the Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman, a half million Rwandans had in fact migrated further east into the D.R. Congo rather than repatriating. In June 2003, General Maurice Baril served as Special Representative to UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan to mediate with the DRC government in forming a new army, when DRC president Joseph Kabila
signed a power-sharing agreement with rival factions.
The journalist and former Médecins sans Frontières
(Canadian Branch) communications director during the 1996 Congo/Zaire crisis, Carole Jerome, stated in 2001 that:
According to Paul Heinbecker
, who later became Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, the "Americans, pursuing their own obscure agenda in the Congo, offered much advice but little assistance, and the British, unwilling to play second fiddle to 'colonials' and supporting the Americans reflexively, were actively unhelpful [...] Canada did not then have the military capacity itself to carry out a major combat operation half a world away". Other sources document copious evidence that the United States had direct involvement in supporting Laurent Kabila and the AFDL in overthrowing the Mobutu regime. Reflecting in 2008 on his work experiences in Zaire, Raymond Chrétien opined that "Mobutu who was a great African leader but living in a very corrupt environment, a very difficult environment; he was a skilful man at keeping his country together".
In Vancouver, in June 1997, Mbaka Kawaya, the chair of Congo's newly-appointed Générale des carrières et des mines (Gecamines) led a Congolese delegation that met with Canadian mining companies active in the Congo, including Harambee Mining Corp., International Panorama Resource Corp., and Tenke Mining Corp. In 1998, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade co-sponsored, under the organisation of Joe Clark, a visit by the DRC Minister of Mines, Frederic Kibassa-Maliba, for meetings with mining companies at the PDAC's annual convention in Toronto. During his Canada mission, Minister Kibassa-Maliba was also scheduled to meet with Canadian NGOs at Montreal offices of the Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin, however, this meeting was reportedly canceled by Canada's Foreign Affairs department following protests made by dozens of representatives from a banned Congolese opposition party, the UDPS (Union for Democracy and Social Progress).
During 1997-1998, former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark
was employed by the Vancouver, Canada-based First Quantum Minerals
as a political adviser to the newly-established Congolese president, Laurent-Desiré Kabila
. Clark also co-directed a 58-member election observers team from the Carter Center
during the DRC's 2006 elections
. From 1993 to the present, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
has been on the board of directors of Barrick Gold Corporation, serving as Chairman of the company's International Advisory Board, during which time Barrick acquired gold mining concessions in the D.R. Congo in 1996, and relinquished them in 1998. According to Barrick's chairman, Peter Munk, Mulroney was recruited because "[h]e has great contacts. He knows every dictator in the world on a first name basis". A third Canadian ex-Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien
, held meetings with D.R. Congo politicians in Kinshasa during January 2005. Since 2008, former Prime Minister Paul Martin
has been co-chair of the Governing Council of the Congo Basin Forest Fund, a multi-donor sustainable and community forestry initiative which was founded to protect the Congo Basin rain forests that are shared by the D.R. Congo and nine other central African nations.
Robert S. Stewart, a Canadian-Swiss dual citizen and graduate of the University of Manitoba
who had worked with Canada's foreign service in Africa for seven years before entering the private sector on African mining and petroleum projects, served as a consultant for the American engineering firm Bechtel International Corporation
and drafted Bechtel's $5 bn. reconstruction plan for the DRC known as "An Approach to National Development. Democratic Republic of Congo". The Bechtel plan was presented to the Congolese government in November 1997 and centred on natural resource-based partnerships in copper and cobalt, diamonds, tin, gold in the east of the country, along with hydro-electric development, forestry, oil and agriculture elsewhere. The Congolese government rejected the Bechtel proposal, devising its own three-year development plan, which it brought to a World Bank-sponsored "Friends of the Congo" meeting of seventeen countries as well as international institutions in Brussels in December 1997; donors pledged to commit $450m. of the $575m. that the DRC team was requesting from them, out of a total plan budgetted at $1.7bn. Also present at the December 1997 meeting in Brussels were the Canadian-registered mining companies Barrick Gold
, America Mineral Fields, Tenke Mining
, and International Panorama Resource Corp. In 1997, Stewart also became advisor, and then briefly in 1998, chairman of America Mineral Fields Inc., a company headquartered in Arizona, U.S.A., but incorporated in Canada (renamed Adastra Minerals Inc. in 2004). After the Congolese government's cancelation of America Mineral Fields' tender for the Kolwezi copper/cobalt tailings concession in early 1998, Colonel Willy Mallants, a former Belgian advisor to Mobutu and in 1996-97 economic adviser to Laurent Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo
, and Robert Stewart announced in Brussels, in May 1998, the establishment of the "Conseil de la République Fédérale Démocratique du Congo", with Stewart as "Economic, Industrial, Diplomatic and Financial Counsellor to the Council", with the aim to overthrow President Laurent Kabila within one year's time. At the Non-Aligned Movement
summit in South Africa in September 1998, Stewart was identified as an advisor to the Council of the Federal Democratic Republic of Congo, a group of exiled Congolese technocrats that sought to restore democracy in their country, and Stewart claimed that a relative of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe
had been granted Stewart's DRC mining concessions. While Stewart claimed at this meeting that President Kabila had "asked [American Mineral Fields] for bribes", American Mineral Fields denied this, adding that Stewart was dismissed shortly following his appointment. Stewart in 2008 was director of the South African-based TransAfrican Minerals Ltd., which reported copper, cobalt and gold holdings at the Kipushi Project in the DRC, and in 2009, Stewart was on the board of directors of the British Columbia-based junior company, ICS Copper Systems (now Nubian Resources Ltd.) which holds a stake in the Musoshi Tailings Project.
Since 1999, the Canadian armed forces contingent, dubbed "Operation CROCODILE", working with the United Nations MONUC peacekeeping force has not exceeded one dozen personnel, with the exception of 2003 when fifty Canadian Forces staff and two Hercules aircraft were deployed at the request of the UN to Bunia
. From 1999 to 2008, Canada reportedly provided at least $20m. in support to peacebuilding exercises in the D.R. Congo, including for the 1999 Lusaka accord, the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, the Group of Friends of the Great Lakes Region, the 2006 elections, and the 2008 Goma Peace Process.
After having its gold properties expropriated by the Congolese government in 1998, Banro Resources successfully sued the DR Congo government in 2000 for $240m., which overturned a previous decision by a Congolese court, and involved the World Bank's
International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes
in Washington, D.C.
Following earlier management of the D.R. Congo's state-owned mining enterprise Gecamines
by the Zimbabwean Billy Rautenbach
(1998–2000) and the Belgian mining executive, George Arthur Forrest (1999–2001), the World Bank supported the appointment of Canadian corporate lawyer Paul Fortin as managing director of the parastatal in 2005, where he remained until his resignation in 2009. Fortin's tenure saw the negotiation of a mining contract originally valued at $6 billion in Katanga Province with Chinese investors, and the Congolese government's "revisitation" of mining agreements accorded under previous regimes, including ones signed with Canadian mining firms.
Human Development Index
hybrid values, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo ranked second-last. The D.R. Congo, Zambia and Zimbabwe were the only three countries whose HDI values in 2010 fell below their 1970 values.
The following graphs decompose these trends into the three components, health, education, and income, suggesting that declines in per capita income are a key factor in lowering the D.R. Congo's HDI value:
Apart from endogenous variables including the Great Lakes region civil wars, high corruption and capital flight levels, and exogenous ones such as foreign company involvement in the DRC's resource conflicts, the child dependency ratio
, that proportion of citizens between the ages of infancy and fourteen, relative to the 15- to 64-year-old population, has altered considerably since 1960 for Canada, but not for the D.R. Congo, and as such may contribute significantly to the divergence in income trends. The ratio for Canada more than halved from 1960 (57%) to 2010 (23%) while for the DRC it has risen from 82% (1960) to 98% (2000), declining slightly to 91% in 2010. The economically-active share of the Canadian population has grown to three and a half adults of working age for every child in 2010, while that for the DRC has maintained at roughly one adult for every child across the timespan. Recent estimates of the probability that a fifteen-year-old male will die before reaching the age of sixty (45q15) show virtually no change in the DRC, from 40.7% (1970) to 42.0% (2010), compared to a steady decline in Canada from 18.5% (1970) to 8.4% (2010).
, International Development Association
, various UN agencies, etc.) from donor to recipient countries are not reported, the OECD has imputed these values, and they suggest that a higher proportion of Canadian aid to the DRC has gone through the latter channels than for most donor countries (29% vs. 26%). Total OECD
Development Assistance Committee
disbursements exceeded commitments by 13% over these five decades mainly because commitment figures were not reported until the year 1966 (and imputed multilateral data began in 1975). Canada reportedly provided US$10,000 in grants to Congo (Kinshasa) in each of the years 1960 and 1964 (approximately 0.1% of the total aid), in addition to financing faculty posts and university bursaries, and providing twelve Canadian technical assistance staff in the field of education. During this period, Adolphe Kasuvubu, a son of President Joseph Kasa-Vubu
was a Canadian External Aid scholarship recipient who studied at the University of Ottawa
. Although only 7% of total Canadian bilateral aid to the DRC has been in the form of loans, Canada has until recently carried higher tied aid ratios than most OECD DAC members, such that a large portion of the total Canadian aid volume was spent on Canadian goods and services; only in the last decade has the tying status declined, from 75% in 2000, to just 2% in 2009.
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From 2000 to 2007, Canada canceled a total of CAN$79.1 m. in bilateral debt owed to it by the D.R. Congo. The above table shows that virtually all of the US$85 m. (constant 2008 US dollars) in loans made by Canada to the DRC occurred during the 1970s and 1980s. Export Development Canada
has reported interest income of C$49 million from the Government of Canada relating to debt relief to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
During the period 1995 to 2009, Canada committed a total of US$395m. in constant 2008 dollars, for bilateral official development assistance
(ODA) to the D.R. Congo, representing 2.4% of the $16.6bn. commitments to the DRC from all OECD
Development Assistance Committee
(DAC) donors. Canada's actual aid disbursements were two-thirds of its commitments, with available data for 2002-2009 showing Canada to have provided a total $202m., or 1.4% of total DAC disbursements of $14.7bn. Canadian ODA disbursements to the DRC represented 1.1% of the US$18.7bn. in total Canadian ODA disbursements to developing countries over 2002-09, and DRC aid from Canada was only one-half the contribution level that Canada made among all donors to developing countries, 2.7%.
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Although only four individual countries ranked among the top ten donors to the DR Congo in 2008-09 (the rest being multilateral agencies), for sixteen of the larger DAC members representing 87% of all DRC aid receipts, Canada ranked ninth-highest both in terms of total and per capita (donor nation) ODA disbursements to the DR Congo over 1960-2009, and in terms of ODA per Congolese citizen. In other words, when Canada's total direct aid to the DRC is divided by the Canadian population in 2009, each Canadian effectively provided $26 to the DRC over the last half-century, and Canada collectively provided $14 for every Congolese citizen, or about one-quarter of a dollar for each of the 66 million Congolese per year. In 2001/2002, the D.R. Congo was the tenth-largest recipient of Canadian bilateral ODA flows, at Cdn$25.2m., in 2004/2005, it was eighteenth (Cdn.$28.3m.), and in 2007/2008 it had fallen to the twenty-fifth position (Cdn$19.1m.). It rose to sixteenth position in 2009/2010 (Cdn.$37.3m.) In earlier decades, the D.R. Congo (Zaire) ranked below twentieth (1960–61), thirteenth (1965–66), below twentieth (1970–71 and 1975–76), eighteenth (1980–81), fifteenth (1985–86), eighteenth (1990–91), and below twentieth (1995–96) in Canadian bilateral assistance. In terms of overall development assistance (country-to-country, multilateral and debt relief), the D.R. Congo ranked fourteenth in 2009/2010 (Cdn.$), in the company of eleven other African nations in the top 20 recipients of Canadian aid that year, and fifth-highest in bilateral humanitarian aid receipts (Cdn.$22.7m.). Nevertheless, when the Canadian government announced in 2009 that it would begin concentrating eighty per cent of its international assistance resources on twenty countries, the D.R. Congo was excluded from the seven African designees. In terms of annual net ODA per capita from all donor nations, Congo/Zaire has gone from receiving 75% greater than the average for all sub-Saharan African nations during the 1960s (eighteenth-highest, US$5.9 in aid per Congolese per year, compared to US$3.8 per sub-Saharan African, current dollars), down to 82% less than the regional average in the 1990s (second-lowest, $6.8/Congolese vs. $28.5/sub-Saharan-African), and recovering to 27% below the average during 2000-2008 (twelfth-lowest, $29.9/Congolese vs. $38.8/sub-SaharanAfrican). The nadir in the 1990s followed the massacre of Lubumbashi student protesters in May 1990, when Belgium, the European Commission, Canada and the United States withdrew all except humanitarian aid to Zaire.
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International development cooperation formed approximately one-half of the DRC's government revenue in 2010, and government revenue was responsible for 27.3% of GDP
.
The Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA) has reported involvement in 108 projects in the DRC between 1999 and early 2011, in the overlapping sectors of democratic governance (34), emergency assistance (33), private sector development (31), health (26), education (11), environment (10), and peacekeeping (5).
In 2011, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation recorded a total of fourteen Canadian civil society groups as active in the D.R. Congo: Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, Canadian Friends Service Committee, Canadian Nurses Association
, Canadian Red Cross
, CARE Canada, Canadian Centre for International Studies and Cooperation
, Collaboration santé internationale, Mennonite Central Committee (Canada) - Ottawa
, Mining Watch Canada, Oxfam-Québec, Presbyterian World Service and Development, Terre Sans Frontières, World Relief Canada, and World Vision Canada.
Since 1984, Terre Sans Frontières, headquartered in La Prairie, Quebec, reports that it has delivered CDN$10 m. in aid projects to the Upper-Uele region of northern DRC, focusing on improved access to health, safe drinking water, education, and community economic development. Oxfam-Québec, present in the DRC/Zaire since 1984, in 2008 was collaborating with 16 Congolese counterpart organisations, employing two hundred Congolese nationals and fourteen Canadian volunteers in 27 development projects mainly in Orientale and Kivu provinces. L'Entraide missionnaire, based in Montreal, has participated since 1989 in missionary and development NGO working groups focusing on Congo-Kinshasa (Table de concertation sur les droits humains au Congo-Kinshasa) and the African Great Lakes regions (Table de concertation sur la région des Grands-Lacs), and has regularly presented evidence on Congolese human rights issues at sessions of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development
.
The Quebec-based Biotechnologie pour le développement durable en Afrique (BDA) is training Congolese farmers in Equateur and Bas-Congo to cultivate and harvest medicinal plants, including the antimalarial-containing margosa and armoise plants.
Of the US$214m. in Canada's imputed multilateral commitments to the D.R. Congo over 2000-2009, at least one-half (ca. US$103m.) has returned directly to the Canadian economy, in the form of Congolese-related World Bank consultancy and supply contracts to Canadian firms, International Finance Corporation
investments in Canadian companies active in the DRC, and one Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
investment to a Canadian firm mining copper in the DRC. CIDA's annual statistical reports for fiscal years 2000-2001 to 2009-2010 show a total of Cdn.$103.4 m., or US$84.3 m., in multilateral development assistance provided to the D.R. Congo by federal government departments other than CIDA; these funds principally derived from the Department of Finance's contributions to international financial institutions
. Over the same period, CIDA made direct contributions totalling Cdn$14.4m. (US$10.4 m.) to eight D.R. Congo-related projects, for which the executing agency partner was the World Bank or International Monetary Fund
, including the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control, and the Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants. During the 2000s, financial inflows to Canada from World Bank group contracts in the DRC (US$103 m.) exceeded Canada's World Bank and IMF contributions to the DRC (US$95 m.) by eight per cent.
international commodity classification, Canada's principal exports to the D.R. Congo over the last two decades have consisted of articles of second-hand clothing and other used textiles, followed by food (chiefly wheat, milk powder, and dried peas), and mining equipment and supplies. There was little fluctuation in the export profile between the two most recent decades.generated with :de:Wikipedia:Helferlein/VBA-Macro for EXCEL tableconversion V1.7<\hiddentext>>
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During 2003-2007, Canada ranked between fourth- and seventh-highest in dollar value, among nations exporting worn clothing and other worn textiles, and in 2007 its global exports of this commodity were valued at US$187m. Canada's used clothing exports to the DRC, US$9.7m. in 2007, represented 3.5% of Canada's global total, and 28.1% of DRC's estimated used clothing imports of US$34.5m. In 2001, humanitarian groups working in rebel-occupied areas of the DRC reported to a United Nations Panel of Experts of "women in some villages who have simply stopped taking their children to the health centres because they no longer possess simple items of clothing to preserve their dignity".
Cobalt from the DRC dominated Canadian imports, however it, petroleum and diamonds were only prominent during the 1990s. The value of imports in the 2000s, chiefly from tropical wood products, was only 2.5% of the previous decade's.
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Source
When sorted according to the top twenty-five industry categories between 1992 and 2009, "other recyclable material[s]" (NAICS code 41819) head the list in every year except for 1995, representing 54.5% of all Canadian exports to the DRC, or US$119m. out of $219m. in nominal dollars. The mining industry ranked second, comprising 5.0% of exports to DRC, although during 2007 and 2008, it reached 9.9% and 14.4%, respectively.
According to statistics for 2007 published by the D.R. Congo's Division des Mines Nord-Kivu, of 24 foreign importers of cassiterite
, wolframite
, slag
and coltan
from North Kivu province, one was registered as Canadian, B.E.B. Investment Inc. It imported 68.0 tonnes of cassiterite from the DRC's GMC comptoir (trading house) in 2007 at a value of USD197,200. This represented 0.7% of the total of 10,172 tonnes of Congolese cassiterite officially exported that year, and also 0.7% of these minerals' combined export value of USD20.7m. From January to September 2008, B.E.B. imported 464 tonnes of cassiterite, or 4.3% of the total 10,903 tonnes exported during that period. For all of 2008, the Ontario-based B.E.B. Investment Inc., managed by Eddy Habimana and Inyange Waza, imported 478,774 tons of cassiterite from GMC's official comptoir in Goma, and the material was acquired from the Bisie mining area. In 2010, BEB Investment (Wicklow) was one of ten cassiterite suppliers to tin smelters involved in ITRI, the UK-based tin industry group's tin traceability project known as the ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi). In 2000, the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo reported that a Canadian company, Banro Resources Corporation, had exported from the D.R. Congo, via Rwanda, cassiterite (tin) to Malaysia and Canada, and coltan to Malaysia. Statistics Canada
, however, has not recorded any tin (HS 260900, HS 282737, HS 8001-8007) or tantalum (HS 2615, 8103) imports from the DRC, nor from Rwanda or Uganda into Canada during 1990-2010, with the exception of US$240. of tin (HS 2007 - "articles of tin, not elsewhere classified") imported from Rwanda in the year 2005.
In 2009, two Quebec-based firms, Boa-Franc, S.E.N.C. and General Woods and Veneers Ltd., along with Ontario-based Weston Premium Woods Inc. imported a total of CDN $591,000 of products from the D.R. Congo.
to be valued at Cdn.$123 mill., compared to $557m. invested in Ghana and $140m. in Nigeria, out of total Canadian investments in Africa for 2010 of $3.05 bill. The stock of total Canadian direct investment in Africa rose from C$2.2 bn. in 2003 (0.5% of total Canadian investment abroad) to C$5.6bn. in 2008 (0.9% of total FDI) and C$5.1bn. in 2009 (0.9%). Canada represented roughly five percent of the UNCTAD
estimate for global FDI stock in Africa of US$72.9bn. in 2008. Global FDI stock in the DR Congo was reported to have risen from US$617m. (2000) to US$2.5bn. (2008) and US$3.1bn. in 2009.
, reported in 2008 furnishing the Quebec-based publisher Beauchemin International Inc. with a bank guarantee valued at under Cdn.$1m. for the sale of school manuals to the government of the D.R. Congo, financed through the Royal Bank of Canada. Beauchemin was awarded a US$4.9m. contract by the World Bank's International Development Association
in 2009 for the provision of primary school mathematics textbooks to the D.R. Congo. Export Development Canada has also reported holding, since 2003, between C$44 million (2003) and C$49 million (2009) in impaired loans, received from the Government of Canada, and designated as reimbursement for debt relief to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The World Bank Contract Awards Search database records a total of 41 contracts awarded to fifteen Canadian firms and nine individuals between 2001 and March 2011, totaling US$26.5 m., out of a total of 1,157 contracts (US$1,711.4 m.) awarded globally for projects specifically designated for the "Democratic Republic of Congo". All but one of the Canadian contracts were for consultancy services, the exception being the aforementioned Beauchemin textbooks supply contract, and all were financed via the International Development Association
arm of The Bank.
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One "successful partnership" cited by a Trade Commissioner with Canada's diplomatic mission in Kinshasa took place over 1993-2004, when CIDA
, the World Bank
, and Société nationale d'électricité (SNEL)
, the Congolese state electrical energy agency, funded a partnership between the Canadian company Berocan International, Inc., and a Congolese counterpart, Projelec, which provided electrification
for 2,500 subscribers and public lighting in the capital city of Kinshasa
. Through CIDA and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Montreal-based Berocan received a total of CDN$890k. in federal government support during 1995-1999. Projelec also partnered in 2009 with Rosemère, Quebec-based LTCC hydro Inc. in a micro-hydroelectric power service on the Mpioka River to serve the Kimbanguist Christian
community of Nkambe in Bas-Congo province.
MagIndustries Corp. (formerly Magnesium Alloy Corp.), a magnesium producer headquartered in Toronto, through its subsidiary, MagEnergy, refurbished turbines at the DRC's INGA II hydroelectric dam, and began receiving from DRC's electric utility, SNEL, in 2010 payments totaling U$240m. following a "protracted dispute"; they also report having carried out work at the Busanga hydroelectric site in Katanga Province. The company also claims that it holds a designated right to supply energy to the DRC's existing regional and international power grids. MagEnergy also reported in 2007 contracting the Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin to prepare a technical review in conjunction with MagEnergy's participation option in the DRC's Zongo II hydroelectric site.
Montreal-based SNC Lavalin reported in 2010 that it was awarded EP contracts
(engineering and procurement) for mining projects in Katanga Province. The 2002 US$0.2m. World Bank contract related to the restoration of copper and cobalt mines. In 2003, the company reported completion of a World Bank-funded environmental impact study and resettlement plan for Congolese citizens affected by the construction of electrical transmission lines, and SNC Lavalin updated the study in 2008, which involved the DRC utility company SNEL's participation in the Southern African Power Pool. SNC Lavalin also supplied the DRC government in 2008 a pre-feasibility study, reportedly supported under a CIDA grant, for the DRC's INGA III hydroelectric facility, a proposal which SNC valued at $3.5bn., with a generating capacity of 4,320 megawatts.
Toronto-based Feronia Inc., a large-scale farmland and plantation operator, acquired in 2009 a 76% interest in palm oil plantations that were previously owned by Unilever
, on ten thousand hectares of arable farmland in Equateur
, Orientale and Bas-Congo
provinces; the company reported production of four thousand tonnes of crude palm oil, total DRC land concessions of one hundred thousand hectares, and began cultivation of edible beans in Bas Congo in 2010. In 2010, Toronto-based Navina Asset Management (name changed to Aston Hill Asset Management in 2011) held 13% and 10% stakes, respectively, in Plantation et Huileries du Congo and Feronia Inc., and fixed income assets in the Democratic Republic of Congo comprised Cdn$1.8m., or 13% of the portfolio's net asset value.
The American engineering consulting firm Aecom
, which acquired the privately-owned Montreal-based firm, Tecsult International, in 2008 for its hydropower expertise and employs 2,000 people in the province of Quebec, was awarded in 2011 a $13.4m. African Development Bank
contract to undertake a feasibility study into the Grand Inga hydroelectricity site in the DR Congo.
Laval, Quebec-based
Corporation Carbon2Green received preliminary authorisation from the Congolese government in 2008 to undertake the cultivation of the biofuel
crop, Jatropha
, on degraded soils unsuitable for food production in Bandundu
Province, to supply rural electrification projects in the DRC, and the company plans to explore methane gas recovery from Lake Kivu
. They are seeking to raise C$27.6m. in investment for these projects.
estimated that the D.R. Congo holds the world's largest known cobalt
resources, and diamond
resources by volume, and the second-largest copper
resources after Chile, and the majority of Canadian-domiciled mining companies active or previously active in the DRC are either exploring for, developing or undertaking large-scale mining of these copper and cobalt resources. Four Canadian companies, Anvil Mining Ltd., First Quantum Minerals
, Lundin Mining
, and Katanga Mining Limited have been engaged in industrial copper and cobalt extraction operations during 2000-2010, and another eight junior Canadian mining companies including Ivanhoe Nickel & Platinum Ltd. and Rubicon Minerals Corporation, as of early 2011, were reporting active holdings of copper and cobalt concessions in Katanga province. Nine Canadian junior mining companies, among which are Kinross Gold Corp., previously held copper and/or cobalt concessions, but have since abandoned them, or had them acquired by other Canadian or South African firms.
Since 1996, Banro has held gold
concessions in South Kivu and Maniema
provinces of the DRC, while six other Canadian companies previously owned Congolese gold properties, including Barrick Gold
(1996–1998), and Moto Goldmines
(2005–2009). In the diamonds sector, Montreal-based Emaxon Financial International Inc. is currently active, while seven other Canadian junior companies reported previous ownership of properties in the DRC during 2001-2009, including Canaf Group Inc. and BRC DiamondCore. Montreal-based Shamika Resources is exploring for tantalum
, niobium
, tin
and tungsten
in the Eastern DRC and Loncor Resources is exploring for gold, platinum, tantalum and other metals. Two Canadian-registered companies own petroleum concessions in the DRC, Heritage Oil plc
, whose founder and Chief Executive Officer is Tony Buckingham
, and EnerGulf Resources Inc..
The Government of Canada's
mining ministry, Natural Resources Canada
estimated that in 2009, Canadian-owned mining assets in the D.R. Congo were valued at Cdn.$3.3 billion, a ten-fold increase over 2001, and represented one-sixth of total Canadian mining assets on the continent of Africa, the second-highest share after Madagascar.
Of the six D.R. Congo projects, valued at a total of $59.7m., that have been funded up to early 2011 by the World Bank Group's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
(MIGA), the very first was made in 2005 to Canada and Ireland as co-investors, on behalf the Dikulushi Mine
held by Anvil Mining Ltd. in Katanga Province; the project's value of US$13.6m. was a guarantee against political risks including expropriation and civil disturbance. Four of the nine D.R. Congo projects sponsored or proposed for sponsorship by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation
up to early 2011 were for Canadian-owned companies active in the DRC: to Kolwezi/Kingamyambo Musonoi Tailings SARL owned by Adastra Minerals Inc.
($50.0m., invested in 2006), Africo Resources Ltd. (acquisition of Cdn.$8m. in Africo shares, invested in 2007), and Kingamyambo Musonoi Tailings SARL as acquired by First Quantum Minerals Ltd., proposed in 2009 at a value of US$4.5 m. in equity funding.
In 2011, Canada's Fraser Institute
annual survey of mining executives reported the DRC's ranking of its mining exploration investment favourability fell from eighth-poorest in 2006 down to second-poorest in 2010, among 45 African, Asian and Latin American countries and 24 jurisdictions in Canada, Australia and the United States, and this was attributed to "the uncertainty created by the nationalization and revision of contracts by the Kabila government".
on the "person in need of protection" basis that, were he deported to the DRC, the government there would be unlikely to provide him with the antiretroviral medications necessary to sustain his life.
Congolese refugees in Canada have come typically from the provinces of Kasai
, Bandundu
, Bas-Congo
and the Kivu
s, belonging to the Luba
, Kongo
, Mbala
, Hunde
and Nande
ethnic groups, and about four-fifths make their home in Montreal. Annual intake of Congo refugees rose in Canada from under forty during the 1980s to over 700 in 1997; sixty percent of these refugee status applications have been accepted by the Canadian government, and 35-40% of refugee families reported being victims of torture or imprisonment in the DRC. The D.R. Congo is one of three African and three Latin American countries affected by internal conflict with which Canada presently has a moratorium on deportation of denied refugee status claimants, based on Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. However, there have been reports citing Canada Border Services Agency data that DRC and other moratoria nationals who were asylum claimants presenting themselves at the U.S.-Canada border have been refused entry.
Refugee status was granted by Canada to fifty-five hundred, female, D.R. Congolese asylum-seekers between 1993 and early 2009, of which forty-five percent involved claimant applications made overseas.
The Government of Quebec's Secrétariat à l’adoption internationale reported a total of 28 adoptions of children born in the DR Congo by families in Quebec over the period 1999-2009, constituting 0.4% of the province's 7,174 international adoptions over that time (2009: 7 out 27 for all Africa, and 477 for all countries; 2008: 3/23/400; 2007: 0/30/497, 2006: 0/14/528, 2005: 0/16/600, 2004: 5/n.d./817, 2003: n.d./n.d./908, 2002: n.d./n.d./817, 2001: n.d./n.d./745, 2000: 9/24/600, 1999: 4/n.d./785); unlike other countries of origin, no registered private adoption intermediary agencies were specified for the Congolese adoptees.
A World Bank survey of educational qualifications of immigrants to six high-income countries showed that DR Congolese immigrants to Canada have significantly higher levels of educational attainment than the average for all immigrants to Canada, where 71.0% of 313 Congolese immigrants in 1975 possessed a "high" educational level compared to just 40.5% for the overall Canadian immigrant sample of 2.76 m. persons, while in 2000, 83.5% of 5,505 Congolese immigrants had attained the "high" educational level, compared to 58.8% for the entire 4.60m. immigrant sample; in the 2000 sample, Canada ranked highest among 195 countries with 51.5% of its labour force having obtained the "high" level of education, while the D.R. Congo was ranked 17th-lowest, with a corresponding ratio of 1.3%. This suggests that not only did all Canadian immigrants in 2000 hold significantly higher educational qualifications than native-born citizens, but Congolese immigrants were nearly twice as likely as native Canadians to be highly educated.
During 2008-2009, retired Canadian Major Philip Lancaster served as Chief of the United Nations Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) initiative for MONUC
in Goma
in the eastern DRC. In early 2010, Dr. Lancaster was Coordinator of the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In April 2010, Michaëlle Jean
, then Governor General of Canada
, paid a three-day state visit to the D.R. Congo, meeting with President Joseph Kabila Kabange
and touring the CIDA-funded Ngaliema Clinic in Kinshasa, and visiting the North Kivu province governor Julien Paluku Kahongya
, Canadian members of the UN peacekeeping force MONUC
and the partially Canadian-funded HEAL Africa Hospital, in Goma
.
In May 2010, following two earlier rejections, Canada declined a United Nations request for Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie
to command the MONUC peacekeeping force comprising twenty thousand troops from twenty countries in Democratic Republic of the Congo; Canada has posted about a dozen soldiers with the mission.
Louise Ramazani Nzanga, the DR Congo's Ambassador to Canada from 2003 to 2010, thanked Canada in a farewell address for its support during the DRC's regional conflicts, in the 2006 Congolese elections, and its support through the Canadian International Development Agency
; Dominique Kilufia Kanfua replaced Ms. Nzanga in 2010 as Ambassador to Canada.
In July 2010, despite Canada temporarily delaying a World Bank decision to cancel $12.3 bn. of the DR Congo's foreign debt on the grounds of the DRC's 2009 annulment of Canadian company First Quantum's $750m copper-cobalt Kolwezi mining agreeement, and Canada abstaining along with Switzerland from the vote, the Bank nevertheless approved the debt write-off decision. The DR Congolese Information Minister, Lambert Mende
, was quoted as saying that "Canada did something that disrupted our efforts as it took a lot for us to meet the debt relief conditions, but we have no problem with them and we will follow our relations with them as usual". In its November 2010 press release, the Paris Club
, of which Canada is one of 19 permanent members, announced that it had approved cancelation of $6.1 bn. and rescheduling of another $1.5bn. of DRC's total external debt of $13.7bn., but expressed "concern over the business environment", noting that "[t]he case of the DRC raised the issue of non cooperative behavior from some litigating creditors".
Canada's Ambassador to Congo (Kinshasa), Anna Sigrid Johnson, met with the Congolese foreign minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba
in August 2010 and discussed the maintenance of security arrangements for Canadian investments in the country as well as on the validation and respect for Canadian contracts signed according to Congolese and international law in the mining, energy and commerce sectors.
In November 2010, the Canadian Association Against Impunity, composed of representatives from the Canadian Centre for International Justice, RAID
and Global Witness
in the United Kingdom, and ASADHO and ACIDH in the D.R. Congo, initiated a class action complaint in a Montreal court on behalf of relatives and survivors of killings committed by the Congolese military of over seventy unarmed civilians in Kilwa, Katanga Province during 2004, for which the Canadian-incorporated Anvil Mining allegedly provided logistical support.
In December 2010, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
deployed five unarmed police officers to the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a period of one year.
Canada has since 2004 abided by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1533-imposed sanctions on arms exports, military technical assistance to the DRC, in addition to assets freezes and travel bans to, in December 2010, 24 Congolese, Rwandans and Ugandans who are suspected of involvement in illegal armed groups or criminal activity, and are listed under UN Security Resolution 1952.
Stéphane Bourgon, a former Canadian Forces
and International Court of Justice
lawyer from Repentigny, Quebec, during 2009 and 2010 represented former military leader and head of the National Congress for the Defence of the People
(CNDP), Laurent Nkunda
against allegations of war crimes at a military tribunal in Rwanda. Bourgon was appointed in 2010 as a communications director with the Canadian government-supported Rights & Democracy (International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development
). In September 2010, the Congolese-Canadian lawyer Nicole Bondo Muaka, a member of the Toges Noires (Black Gowns) human rights group, was detained for one week by Congolese authorities on suspicion of collusion during an attack on DRC President Joseph Kabila's motorcade by members of an outlawed opposition party. Following four decades in the federal Canadian civil service, former Canadian Ambassador to Zaire and UN Special Envoy Raymond Chrétien joined in 2002 the Canadian international corporate law firm of Fasken Martineau as a strategic advisor.
Embassy of Canada to Congo in Kinshasa
Video
Audio
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
. In 2009, the D.R. Congo's Prime Minister, Adolphe Muzito
Adolphe Muzito
Adolphe Muzito is a Congolese politician who has been the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2008. Muzito, a member of the Unified Lumumbist Party , was previously Minister of the Budget under Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga from 2007 to 2008.Muzito, who is from Gungu,...
, reported that Canada "contributed enormously to the development" of his country, with 22 Canadian companies employing 13,000 persons in the energy and mining sectors.
DRC's rank among recipients of Canadian bilateral development assistance
Official development assistance
Official development assistance is a term compiled by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to measure aid. The DAC first compiled the term in 1969. It is widely used by academics and journalists as a convenient indicator of...
has fluctuated between tenth and twenty-fifth highest since 1960, and Canada was ninth among country donors to the DRC over 1960-2009, with total disbursements of US$892 million (constant 2008 dollars) accounting for 2.8% of Congolese country-to-country aid receipts. Canada's bilateral aid included a total of US$84.5 mill. (constant 2008 dollars) in bilateral loans to the former Zaire during 1972 to 1987, however over 2003-2006, Canada provided Cdn.$79.1 mill. (US$56.9 m.) in bilateral debt relief to the DRC under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries is a group of 40 developing countries with high levels of poverty and debt overhang which are eligible for special assistance from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.- History and structure :...
. In terms of aid via multilateral channels over 2000-2009, Canada contributed US$95 mill. to Bretton Woods institutions
Bretton Woods system
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states in the mid 20th century...
on behalf of the DRC, while Canadian mining companies and consulting firms received US$103 mill. in investments, political risk insurance, and consultancy and procurement contracts from World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
group members over the same period. One third of the DRC's imports of second-hand clothing over the last two decades has come from Canada, and this commodity has comprised one-half of Canada's total exports to the DRC.
While the Canadian government provided in 2009 US$40 million in development aid to the DRC, Canadian companies held US$4.5 billion in mining-related investments there, making the DRC the first or second-largest African destination for Canadian mining activities at the end of the 2000s. The Government of Canada has reported 28 Canadian mining and exploration companies operating in the D.R. Congo between 2001 and 2009, of which four (Anvil Mining
Anvil Mining
Anvil Mining is a copper producer that has been operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2002.The company headquarters are based in Montreal, Canada.Anvil is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Australian Stock Exchange....
, First Quantum Minerals
First Quantum Minerals
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. is a Vancouver, British Columbia based mining and metals company whose principal activities include mineral exploration, development and mining....
, Katanga Mining, Lundin Mining
Lundin Mining
Lundin Mining is a multinational minerals company with operations in Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Russia. Lundin Mining is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange as part of the S&P/TSX 60 index...
) were engaged in commercial-scale extraction, with their collective assets in the DRC ranging from Cdn.$161 mill. in 2003 up to $5.2 bill. in 2008, and these companies were supported in 2009 by Canadian and Quebec public pension plan investments of Cdn.$319 mill.
First Quantum Minerals Ltd.
First Quantum Minerals
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. is a Vancouver, British Columbia based mining and metals company whose principal activities include mineral exploration, development and mining....
, a Canadian mining company active in the D.R. Congo since 1997, reported overall contributions amounting to 3.0% of the Congolese gross national income
Gross National Income
The GNI consists of: the personal consumption expenditures, the gross private investment, the government consumption expenditures, the net income from assets abroad , and the gross exports of goods and services, after deducting two components: the gross imports of goods and services, and the...
in 2009, and while the company placed twenty-seventh among Canadian corporate social responsibility rankings in the same year, it closed all its Congolese operations during 2010, following a Congolese government revocation of one of First Quantum's exploitation permits, and the initiation by First Quantum and other stakeholders of international arbitration proceedings against the Congolese government. In 2010, Canada's temporary delay and abstention from a World Bank decision to cancel most of the D.R. Congo's external debt and complete the review of the DRC's Extended Credit Facility, was officially based on Canadian concerns over reform sustainability adversely affecting DRC's investment climate and development objectives. While Canada's actions drew criticism from the Congolese government, diplomatic relations were not deemed to have been impaired.
Canada also expressed concerns over the DRC's relations with Canadian companies, and the abstention was reportedly linked directly to First Quantum's legal proceedings.
In addition to a total of 2,200 Canadian military personnel deployed to Congolese and Zairean conflicts during 1960-1964 and 1996, individual Canadians have had significant roles in the history of the Congo, including:
- Leading the military conquest of the Katanga region for Belgium's King Leopold II in 1891: William Grant StairsWilliam Grant StairsWilliam Grant Stairs was a Canadian-British explorer, soldier, and adventurer who had a leading role in two of the most controversial expeditions in the history of the colonisation of Africa.-Education:...
. - Printing, from 1903–1908, the very first books to be published in the Lingala languageLingala languageLingala, or Ngala, is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo , as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers...
, a language which became a lingua francaLingua francaA lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
of the D.R. Congo, with 25 million speakers worldwide: Mère Marie-Bernadette. - Leading diplomatic and military missions of the United Nations to ZaireZaireThe Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...
and the D.R. Congo during the 1990s and 2000s: Raymond ChrétienRaymond ChrétienRaymond Chrétien, OC is the nephew of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and was an ambassador from Canada:* France 2000–2003* United States 1994–2000* Belgium 1991–1994* Mexico 1985–1988* Congo 1978–1981...
, 1996; Maurice BarilMaurice BarilJoseph Gérard Maurice Baril, CMM, MSM, CD is a retired General officer in the Canadian Forces, a Military Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General & head of the Military Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the United Nations from 1992 to 1997, and Chief of the Defence...
, 1996 and 2003; Philip Lancaster, 2008-2009 and 2010. - Political counsel to President Laurent Kabila during 1997-1998: former Canadian Prime Minister Joe ClarkJoe ClarkCharles Joseph "Joe" Clark, is a Canadian statesman, businessman, and university professor, and former journalist and politician...
. - Plotting, unsuccessfully, an overthrow of Laurent Kabila's government in 1998: Robert Stewart.
- Management and partial privatization of the D.R. Congo's national mining company, GécaminesGécaminesGécamines, or La Générale des Carrières et des Mines, is a state-owned mining company in the Democratic Republic of Congo . Its principal products are copper , cobalt and zinc...
, 2005-2009: Paul Fortin. - Legal representation for former military leader Laurent NkundaLaurent NkundaLaurent Nkunda or Laurent Nkundabatware, or Laurent Nkunda Batware, or as he prefers to be called The Chairman — is a former General in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo and is the former warlord operating in the province of Nord-Kivu, sympathetic to Congolese Tutsis and the...
against allegations of war crimes at a military tribunal in Rwanda, 2009-2010: Stéphane Bourgon.
Four fifths of the fissionable
Fissile
In nuclear engineering, a fissile material is one that is capable of sustaining a chain reaction of nuclear fission. By definition, fissile materials can sustain a chain reaction with neutrons of any energy. The predominant neutron energy may be typified by either slow neutrons or fast neutrons...
uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
and plutonium
Plutonium
Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation...
used by the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
in the production of atomic bombs that were exploded over Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
and Nagasaki
Nagasaki
is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Nagasaki was founded by the Portuguese in the second half of the 16th century on the site of a small fishing village, formerly part of Nishisonogi District...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, in 1945 came from five thousand tons of Congolese and Canadian pitchblende
Uraninite
Uraninite is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO2, but also contains UO3 and oxides of lead, thorium, and rare earth elements...
which was refined at the Canadian government-owned Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited
Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited
The Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited company was originally organized in 1927 as Eldorado Gold Mines Limited to develop a gold mine in Manitoba. Its president Gilbert LaBine later found radioactive deposits at Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories in 1930, which led to the development of the...
in Port Hope, Ontario
Port Hope, Ontario
Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, about east of Toronto and about west of Kingston. It is located at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County...
.
History
In 1887, William Henry Faulknor, a young Canadian from Hamilton, Ontario who had joined the Plymouth BrethrenPlymouth Brethren
The Plymouth Brethren is a conservative, Evangelical Christian movement, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s. Although the group is notable for not taking any official "church name" to itself, and not having an official clergy or liturgy, the title "The Brethren," is...
evangelical movement, arrived at Bunkeya, in Katanga, a centralized state ruled by Msiri; Msiri employed Faulknor and other missionaries as "errand boys", symbols of his influence, while Faulknor taught and converted a small group of redeemed slaves.
William Grant Stairs
William Grant Stairs
William Grant Stairs was a Canadian-British explorer, soldier, and adventurer who had a leading role in two of the most controversial expeditions in the history of the colonisation of Africa.-Education:...
(1863–1892), a Canadian born in Halifax, Nova Scotia
City of Halifax
Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...
and educated at the Royal Military College of Canada
Royal Military College of Canada
The Royal Military College of Canada, RMC, or RMCC , is the military academy of the Canadian Forces, and is a degree-granting university. RMC was established in 1876. RMC is the only federal institution in Canada with degree granting powers...
in Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...
, was a civil engineer, explorer and mercenary who was appointed by Belgium's
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
King Leopold II to lead an expedition
Stairs Expedition to Katanga
The Stairs Expedition to Katanga of 1891−1892 led by Captain William Stairs was the winner in a race between two imperial powers to claim Katanga, a vast mineral-rich territory in Central Africa for civilization, during which a local chief, was killed...
in 1891 of four hundred men which captured the Katanga (Shaba) copper territories for Belgium. Contemporaneous accounts of the expedition reported that during a confrontation, Katanga's king Msiri was shot dead and then decapitated, the head placed on a stake by Stairs's forces. Stairs then began reorganising affairs, appointing Msiri's son Mukandavantu (Mukanda Bantu) to replace Msiri, and securing the Congo State's authority over a fifty-mile radius. Stairs himself died of malaria only six months later while on trek to the coast, in Chinde
Chinde
Chinde is a town of Mozambique, and a port for the Zambezi valley. It is located on the Chinde River, and is an important fishing center. It exports copra and sugar, and had a population of 16,500 in 1980...
, Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
, and was buried there. The Brethren missionaries including Faulknor made no attempt to obstruct Stairs's campaign and relied on the Belgian military following Msiri's defeat. Faulknor left Katanga in 1892, and returned to Canada. The Canadian Baptist Mission (Mission des Baptistes Réguliers du Canada) established a presence in the Congo in 1926, and had two missions in southern Léopoldville Province in 1946.
Possibly the earliest Canadian woman to live and work in the Congo was a Catholic missionary and book printer from Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
: Mère Marie-Bernadette (née Bernadette Beaupré) was born in 1877 in Saint-Raymond
Saint-Raymond, Quebec
Saint-Raymond, also called Saint-Raymond de Portneuf, is a city in Quebec, Canada, located about north-west of Quebec City. It is the largest city in population and area of the Portneuf Regional County Municipality.- Economy :...
, entered the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary
Franciscan Missionaries of Mary
Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, or the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary is a Roman Catholic order founded by Sister Mary of the Passion, Helene de Chappotin, in 1877 at Ootacamund, India....
in 1894, and died in Boma, Congo Free State
Congo Free State
The Congo Free State was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Its origins lay in Leopold's attracting scientific, and humanitarian backing for a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine...
in 1908, from trypanosomiasis
Trypanosomiasis
Trypanosomiasis or trypanosomosis is the name of several diseases in vertebrates caused by parasitic protozoan trypanosomes of the genus Trypanosoma. Approximately 500,000 men, women and children in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa suffer from human African trypanosomiasis which is caused by...
. On her departure for the Congo, Soeur Marie-Bernadette was destined for an orphanage to be founded at the mission station of Stanley-Falls
Boyoma Falls
Boyoma Falls, formerly known as Stanley Falls, consists of seven cataracts, each no more than 15' high, extending over more than along a curve of the Lualaba River between the river port towns of Ubundu and Kisangani/Boyoma in the Orientale region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.At the...
, however she was posted downriver at Nouvelle-Anvers instead, arriving there on 27 July 1900. Having received training in typesetting while at the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary institute in Vanves
Vanves
Vanves is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe and the tenth in France -History:...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
,
Marie-Bernadette was designated in 1901 by Égide De Boeck (1875–1944), the Scheut missionary and vice-director of the colonial boarding school at Nouvelle-Anvers, to undertake the printing and binding of the very first books to be published in the Lingala language
Lingala language
Lingala, or Ngala, is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo , as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers...
; these grammars, lexicons, religious tracts and hymn books were authored by De Boeck, and by Father Camille Van Ronslé. With a very limited supply of type, only one page could be printed at a time, however at least eight volumes in Lingala were published under Marie-Bernadette's guidance, beginning in 1903 with Mambi makristu [Things Christian] by Van Ronslé and Buku moke moa kutanga Lingala [Little book for reading Lingala] by De Boeck. One century later, Lingala, which De Boeck had constructed from elements of Bangala
Bangala language
Bangala, or Ngala, is a Bantu language spoken in the northeast part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in South Sudan, and the extreme western part of Uganda. A divergent form of Lingala, it's used as a lingua franca by people with different languages and rarely as a first language. The...
and other Bantu languages including Bobangi, Mabale and Iboko, has 25 million speakers worldwide, and has become a lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
in both the D.R. Congo and the Republic of the Congo
Republic of the Congo
The Republic of the Congo , sometimes known locally as Congo-Brazzaville, is a state in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.The region was dominated by...
.
In Canada, church groups in Victoria and Ottawa contributed to the European condemnation of the atrocities committed by King Leopold II against Congolese slave labourers, in the form of a letter written to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier
Wilfrid Laurier
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, GCMG, PC, KC, baptized Henri-Charles-Wilfrid Laurier was the seventh Prime Minister of Canada from 11 July 1896 to 6 October 1911....
, calling upon Britain to "secure to the people of the Congo Free State due protection and justice", and this public pressure ultimately led in 1908 to Leopold's relinquishment, and creation of the Belgian Congo
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Congo Free State, 1884–1908:Until the latter...
colony.
In 1939, the United States purchased 1,200 tons of uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
ore from the Union Minière du Haut Katanga
Union Minière du Haut Katanga
The Union Minière du Haut Katanga was a Belgian mining company, once operating in Katanga, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
's Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Congo Free State, 1884–1908:Until the latter...
, that was warehoused on Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The Canadian municipality of Port Hope, Ontario
Port Hope, Ontario
Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, about east of Toronto and about west of Kingston. It is located at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County...
was site of the former radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
producer and, at that time, sole North American uranium refiner, Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited
Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited
The Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited company was originally organized in 1927 as Eldorado Gold Mines Limited to develop a gold mine in Manitoba. Its president Gilbert LaBine later found radioactive deposits at Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories in 1930, which led to the development of the...
, which between 1941 and 1946 provided a steady supply of refined uranium oxide to the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
. In 1942, the Canadian government acquired Eldorado, making it a crown corporation
Crown corporations of Canada
Canadian Crown corporations are enterprises owned by the federal government of Canada , one of Canada's provincial governments or one of the territorial governments. Crown corporations have a long standing presence in the country and have been instrumental in the formation of the state...
in 1944. Eldorado's initial supplies were derived from uranium concentrates at Port Hope that had accumulated as tailings from its past radium operations, and, beginning in 1942, refined from newly-mined ore shipped from its re-opened Great Bear Lake
Great Bear Lake
Great Bear Lake is the largest lake entirely within Canada , the third or fourth largest in North America, and the seventh or eighth largest in the world...
pitchblende
Uraninite
Uraninite is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO2, but also contains UO3 and oxides of lead, thorium, and rare earth elements...
mine in the Northwest Territories
Northwest Territories
The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...
. Eldorado in addition refined at Port Hope the US's Congolese ore stockpile that had been shipped from the New York storage facility, and further shipments of ore from the Congo. The 1,100 tons of Canadian-mined uranium, and 3,700 tons from the Congo that were refined in Canada, along with 1,200 tons from Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, comprised the six thousand tons of uranium oxide that formed the Manhattan Project's raw materials for the fissionable cores of the uranium-235
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...
and plutonium-239
Plutonium-239
Plutonium-239 is an isotope of plutonium. Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 has also been used and is currently the secondary isotope. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in...
atomic bombs that were released and exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
, Japan in August 1945, immediately killing an estimated thirty percent of Hiroshima's civilian and military population, and resulting in an estimated total of 293,000 fatalities in the two cities, from both the immediate blast and long-term radiation exposure.
The Belgian Congo became, after the Second World War, one of the first of Canada's commercial partners in Africa, the first trade post outside the British Commonwealth, with a trade commissioner posted in Leopoldville
Leopoldville
Leopoldville may refer to:* The capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, today known as Kinshasa* SS Leopoldville, a troopship sunk in 1944...
in 1948, ranking it among Canada's top dozen trading partners; in the mid-1950s the Canadian company Aluminum Limited attempted to gain control of the construction of the Inga
Inga Dam
The Inga Dams, located in western Democratic Republic of the Congo 140 miles southwest of Kinshasa, are hydroelectric dams on the largest waterfalls in the world, Inga Falls. Here the Congo River drops 96 metres and has an average flow of 42,476 m³/s....
hydro-electric power project at Matadi
Matadi
Matadi is the chief sea port of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the capital of the Bas-Congo province. It has a population of 245,862 . Matadi is situated on the left bank of the Congo River from the mouth and below the last navigable point before rapids make the river impassable for a...
on the Congo River
Congo River
The Congo River is a river in Africa, and is the deepest river in the world, with measured depths in excess of . It is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, though it has only one-fifth the volume of the world's largest river, the Amazon...
, however they "anxiously preferred to remain discreet" to avoid "antagoniz[ing] Belgian business interests".
The Royal Bank of Canada
Royal Bank of Canada
The Royal Bank of Canada or RBC Financial Group is the largest financial institution in Canada, as measured by deposits, revenues, and market capitalization. The bank serves seventeen million clients and has 80,100 employees worldwide. The company corporate headquarters are located in Toronto,...
partnered in 1957 with eight other international banks in furnishing a $40 million World Bank loan to the Belgian Congo for the building of roads. In their 1962 book Anatomy of Big Business, Libbie and Frank Park traced a direct connection from the Royal Bank's president and vice-president's directorship of Sogemines Ltd., a Canadian investment and holding company and Belgian subsidiary, to shared directorship in the Belgian parent conglomerate, Société Générale de Belgique
Société Générale de Belgique
The Société Générale de Belgique was one of the largest companies that ever existed in Belgium. It was founded in 1822 by William I, and existed until 2003, when its then sole shareholder, Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, merged it with Tractebel to form Suez-Tractebel.-History:As part of the terms of the...
, which also owned the Congolese firm Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. The authors identified an extended network involving major Canadian corporations including Canadian Petrofina Ltd.
Petrofina
Petrofina was a Belgian oil company which merged with Total in 1999 to form TotalFina, but the name has now been changed back to Total after another merger...
, Abitibi Power and Paper Company
Abitibi Power and Paper Company
Abitibi Power and Paper Company was a Montreal, Quebec based business founded in 1917. The firm was a mainstay of the Canadian newsprint industry in thefirst half of the 20th century. The manufacturer became bankrupt in 1935....
, Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Ltd.
TransCanada pipeline
The TransCanada pipeline is a system of natural gas pipelines, up to 48 inches in diameter, that carries gas through Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. It is maintained by TransCanada PipeLines, LP...
, Noranda Mines Ltd., and Dominion Steel & Coal Corp. Ltd.
Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation
The Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation was a Canadian coal mining and steel manufacturing company.Incorporated in 1928 and operational in 1930, DOSCO was predated by the British Empire Steel Corporation which was a merger of the Dominion Coal Company, the Dominion Iron and Steel Company and the...
, concluding that "[e]veryone is happy; everyone is scratching everyone else's back at a profit - and profits are extracted from the labor of Congo workers who up till recently have had nothing to say about the situation".
In July 1960, the newly appointed Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Émery Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only ten weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis...
, made an official visit to Canada (Montreal and Ottawa), requesting Francophone technical assistance for his country, however financial assistance was turned down by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker
John Diefenbaker
John George Diefenbaker, PC, CH, QC was the 13th Prime Minister of Canada, serving from June 21, 1957, to April 22, 1963...
. During the ensuing Congo Crisis
Congo Crisis
The Congo Crisis was a period of turmoil in the First Republic of the Congo that began with national independence from Belgium and ended with the seizing of power by Joseph Mobutu...
, about 1,800 Canadians from 1960-1964 served among the 93,000 predominantly African peacekeepers with the United Nations Operation in the Congo
United Nations Operation in the Congo
Opération des Nations unies au Congo, abbreviated ONUC, was a United Nations peacekeeping force in Congo that was established after United Nations Security Council Resolution 143 of July 14, 1960...
(ONUC), working chiefly as communications signallers and delivering via the Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
The history of the Royal Canadian Air Force begins in 1920, when the air force was created as the Canadian Air Force . In 1924 the CAF was renamed the Royal Canadian Air Force and granted royal sanction by King George V. The RCAF existed as an independent service until 1968...
humanitarian food shipments and logistical support. The Canadian participation stemmed more from overwhelming public opinion, and not decisive action on the part of the Diefenbaker government, according to historians Norman Hillmer
Norman Hillmer
George Norman Hillmer is a leading Canadian historian and teacher and is among the leading scholars on Canada-US relations....
and Jack Granatstein
Jack Granatstein
Jack Lawrence Granatstein, OC, FRSC is a Canadian historian who specializes in political and military history.-Education:Born in Toronto, Ontario, Granatstein received a graduation diploma from Le College militaire royal de Saint-Jean in 1959, his BA from the Royal Military College of Canada in...
. However, Diefenbaker reportedly refused to comply with numerous public calls for Canada to provide humanitarian relief to 230,000 Congolese famine victims in South Kasai in 1961 ostensibly because "surplus foodstuffs should be distributed to unemployed persons in Canada" as a first priority. Two Canadians died from non-conflict-related causes, and, out of the 33 Canadians injured in the conflict, twelve received "severe beatings" by the Congolese forces. Although Patrice Lumumba dismissed the first incidences of these beatings, on August 18, 1960, as "unimportant" and "blown out of all proportion" in order for the UN to "influence public opinion", he attributed them a day later to the Armée Nationale Congolaise's "excess of zeal". Historians have described these incidents as cases of mistaken identity under chaotic circumstances, in which Canadian personnel were confused by Congolese soldiers with Belgian paratroopers, or mercenaries working for the Katanga secession. Only a quarter of Canada's signallers extended their six-month tours of duty to a full year, and Canadian forces reportedly found the Congolese to be "illiterate, very volatile, superstitious and easily influenced", including an instance where a Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel successfully persuaded Kivu Province's Prime Minister to accept a relief contingent from Malaysia by explaining to him that the Malaysians were capable of diverting bullets in flight away from their intended path. A recent study concluded that while the Canadian government "demonstrated a greater willingness to accommodate the Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba than other Western nations" and publicly did not side with either faction, it "[p]rivately [...] favoured the more Western oriented [President] Kasavubu". Canada's troops earned the trust of Joseph Mobutu
Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga , commonly known as Mobutu or Mobutu Sese Seko , born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, was the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997...
, the latter visiting Canada in 1964 as President of Zaire
Zaire
The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...
, during which he acknowledged Canada's support in maintaining his country's territorial integrity.
Canada established formal diplomatic ties with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1965, with Ambassador J.C. Gordon Brown taking charge of the Canadian embassy in Léopoldville.
With funding from the Canadian International Development Agency
Canadian International Development Agency
The Canadian International Development Agency was formed in 1968 by the Canadian government. CIDA administers foreign aid programs in developing countries, and operates in partnership with other Canadian organizations in the public and private sectors as well as other international organizations...
(CIDA), the Quebec firm Gauthier, Poulin et Thériault (later Groupe Poulin & Thériault) conducted an inventory of 5.2 million hectares of Zairois forest during 1974-1976. During the 1980s, Canada undertook a detailed inventory of Zaire's forestry resources with the aim of developing the sector, via the Service Permanent d’Inventaire et d’Aménagement Forestier (SPIAF).
In November 1996, the first deployment of Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team
Disaster Assistance Response Team
The Disaster Assistance Response Team is a rapidly deployable team of 200 Canadian Forces personnel. It provides assistance to disaster-affected regions for up to 40 days. DART's headquarters is in Kingston, Ontario...
(DART), along with 354 Canadian Forces
Canadian Forces
The Canadian Forces , officially the Canadian Armed Forces , are the unified armed forces of Canada, as constituted by the National Defence Act, which states: "The Canadian Forces are the armed forces of Her Majesty raised by Canada and consist of one Service called the Canadian Armed Forces."...
personnel, out of 1,500 originally committed, formed "Operation Assurance", with its mission to deliver humanitarian services to Rwandan refugees in eastern Zaire, as part of a Canada-led, United Nations-mandated African Great Lakes Multinational Force. Raymond Chrétien
Raymond Chrétien
Raymond Chrétien, OC is the nephew of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and was an ambassador from Canada:* France 2000–2003* United States 1994–2000* Belgium 1991–1994* Mexico 1985–1988* Congo 1978–1981...
, a nephew of the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
Jean Chrétien
Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien , known commonly as Jean Chrétien is a former Canadian politician who was the 20th Prime Minister of Canada. He served in the position for over ten years, from November 4, 1993 to December 12, 2003....
, who was Canada's ambassador to the United States and previously in Zaire
Zaire
The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...
from 1978–1981, was appointed during November and December 1996, the UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Great Lakes Region; Chrétien's role was to help defuse the tension in the region, initiate a negotiation process for the repatriation of Rwandan and Burundian refugees in eastern Zaire, and to secure a ceasefire with the leader of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo
Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo
The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire was a coalition of Congolese dissidents, disgruntled minority groups and nations that toppled President Mobutu Sese Seko and brought Laurent Kabila to power in the First Congo War...
(ADFL), Mr. Laurent-Désiré Kabila
Laurent-Désiré Kabila
Laurent-Désiré Kabila was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from May 17, 1997, when he overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko, until his assassination by his bodyguards on January 18, 2001...
. Assisted under Canadian Forces Operation LEGATION, Raymond Chrétien consulted with Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko and with the leaders in Rwanda, Burundi, and neighbouring countries. While Chrétien did not meet with Laurent Kabila despite requests from the latter, the Canadian Lieutenant-General Maurice Baril
Maurice Baril
Joseph Gérard Maurice Baril, CMM, MSM, CD is a retired General officer in the Canadian Forces, a Military Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General & head of the Military Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the United Nations from 1992 to 1997, and Chief of the Defence...
and leader of the multinational force did meet with Kabila in Goma in November 1996, discussing food airlifts for the Rwandan refugees in eastern Zaire. General Baril secured a promise from the AFDL to not fire on humanitarian relief aircraft in return for providing Kabila's forces with advance notice of these flights, however Baril's convoy of Joint Task Force 2
Joint Task Force 2
Joint Task Force 2 is an elite Special Operations Force of the Canadian Armed Forces primarily tasked with counter-terrorism operations...
personnel was reportedly ambushed en route between Goma and Kigali, and had to be rescued by U.S. Apache and Tomahawk helicopters. Prompted in November 1996 by television images of the refugees, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
Jean Chrétien
Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien , known commonly as Jean Chrétien is a former Canadian politician who was the 20th Prime Minister of Canada. He served in the position for over ten years, from November 4, 1993 to December 12, 2003....
reported contacting world leaders to assemble an international military force of 15,000, including Europeans and Americans, under Canadian command, however Chrétien notes that the crisis resolved itself before a Security Council resolution had been obtained. Estimates of the number of Rwandan refugees in the eastern DRC varied widely, from France counting "700,000" to Germany's "500,000", Canada's "300,000 to 500,000", and the United States NGO, Human Rights Watch, assuming only a few tens of thousands. In mid-December 1996, both Raymond Chrétien and Maurice Baril recommended the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers, based on evidence of a mass repatriation of the Hutu refugees, and then-assistant deputy foreign minister Paul Heinbecker announced the Government of Canada's decision to end the mission on December 31. Despite these actions, according to the Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman, a half million Rwandans had in fact migrated further east into the D.R. Congo rather than repatriating. In June 2003, General Maurice Baril served as Special Representative to UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan to mediate with the DRC government in forming a new army, when DRC president Joseph Kabila
Joseph Kabila
Joseph Kabila Kabange is a Congolese politician who has been President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since January 2001. He took office ten days after the assassination of his father, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila...
signed a power-sharing agreement with rival factions.
The journalist and former Médecins sans Frontières
Médecins Sans Frontières
' , or Doctors Without Borders, is a secular humanitarian-aid non-governmental organization best known for its projects in war-torn regions and developing countries facing endemic diseases. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland...
(Canadian Branch) communications director during the 1996 Congo/Zaire crisis, Carole Jerome, stated in 2001 that:
Washington had absolutely no desire to go in and stop the carnage wrought by Kabila. Instead it prevailed upon the Canadians to lead this doomed mission, and they were willing dupes. Jean Chrétien had been moved by sights of killings on TV, and genuinely wanted to do something. Wading into this we had the prime minister's nephew and ambassador to the US, Raymond Chrétien, who was hopelessly unprepared. When he suggested the solution was setting up a hospital in Rwanda, where MSF had been running a hospital for years, one of our doctors moaned, 'Oh dear, the man does need some work'. Meanwhile, the only ones who actually did want to intervene seriously were the French, just as they had finally done themselves in Rwanda, with Operation Turquoise.
According to Paul Heinbecker
Paul Heinbecker
Paul Heinbecker is a retired Canadian career diplomat and a former Canadian ambassador to Germany and permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York....
, who later became Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, the "Americans, pursuing their own obscure agenda in the Congo, offered much advice but little assistance, and the British, unwilling to play second fiddle to 'colonials' and supporting the Americans reflexively, were actively unhelpful [...] Canada did not then have the military capacity itself to carry out a major combat operation half a world away". Other sources document copious evidence that the United States had direct involvement in supporting Laurent Kabila and the AFDL in overthrowing the Mobutu regime. Reflecting in 2008 on his work experiences in Zaire, Raymond Chrétien opined that "Mobutu who was a great African leader but living in a very corrupt environment, a very difficult environment; he was a skilful man at keeping his country together".
In Vancouver, in June 1997, Mbaka Kawaya, the chair of Congo's newly-appointed Générale des carrières et des mines (Gecamines) led a Congolese delegation that met with Canadian mining companies active in the Congo, including Harambee Mining Corp., International Panorama Resource Corp., and Tenke Mining Corp. In 1998, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade co-sponsored, under the organisation of Joe Clark, a visit by the DRC Minister of Mines, Frederic Kibassa-Maliba, for meetings with mining companies at the PDAC's annual convention in Toronto. During his Canada mission, Minister Kibassa-Maliba was also scheduled to meet with Canadian NGOs at Montreal offices of the Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin, however, this meeting was reportedly canceled by Canada's Foreign Affairs department following protests made by dozens of representatives from a banned Congolese opposition party, the UDPS (Union for Democracy and Social Progress).
During 1997-1998, former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark
Joe Clark
Charles Joseph "Joe" Clark, is a Canadian statesman, businessman, and university professor, and former journalist and politician...
was employed by the Vancouver, Canada-based First Quantum Minerals
First Quantum Minerals
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. is a Vancouver, British Columbia based mining and metals company whose principal activities include mineral exploration, development and mining....
as a political adviser to the newly-established Congolese president, Laurent-Desiré Kabila
Laurent-Désiré Kabila
Laurent-Désiré Kabila was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from May 17, 1997, when he overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko, until his assassination by his bodyguards on January 18, 2001...
. Clark also co-directed a 58-member election observers team from the Carter Center
Carter Center
The Carter Center is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter. In partnership with Emory University, The Carter Center works to advance human rights and alleviate human suffering...
during the DRC's 2006 elections
Democratic Republic of the Congo general election, 2006
General elections were held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on July 30, 2006, the first multiparty elections in the country in 41 years. Voters went to the polls to elect both a new President of the Republic and a new National Assembly, the lower-house of the Parliament.The polls were...
. From 1993 to the present, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
Brian Mulroney
Martin Brian Mulroney, was the 18th Prime Minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993 and was leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1983 to 1993. His tenure as Prime Minister was marked by the introduction of major economic reforms, such as the Canada-U.S...
has been on the board of directors of Barrick Gold Corporation, serving as Chairman of the company's International Advisory Board, during which time Barrick acquired gold mining concessions in the D.R. Congo in 1996, and relinquished them in 1998. According to Barrick's chairman, Peter Munk, Mulroney was recruited because "[h]e has great contacts. He knows every dictator in the world on a first name basis". A third Canadian ex-Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien
Jean Chrétien
Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien , known commonly as Jean Chrétien is a former Canadian politician who was the 20th Prime Minister of Canada. He served in the position for over ten years, from November 4, 1993 to December 12, 2003....
, held meetings with D.R. Congo politicians in Kinshasa during January 2005. Since 2008, former Prime Minister Paul Martin
Paul Martin
Paul Edgar Philippe Martin, PC , also known as Paul Martin, Jr. is a Canadian politician who was the 21st Prime Minister of Canada, as well as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada....
has been co-chair of the Governing Council of the Congo Basin Forest Fund, a multi-donor sustainable and community forestry initiative which was founded to protect the Congo Basin rain forests that are shared by the D.R. Congo and nine other central African nations.
Robert S. Stewart, a Canadian-Swiss dual citizen and graduate of the University of Manitoba
University of Manitoba
The University of Manitoba , in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, is the largest university in the province of Manitoba. It is Manitoba's most comprehensive and only research-intensive post-secondary educational institution. It was founded in 1877, making it Western Canada’s first university. It placed...
who had worked with Canada's foreign service in Africa for seven years before entering the private sector on African mining and petroleum projects, served as a consultant for the American engineering firm Bechtel International Corporation
Bechtel
Bechtel Corporation is the largest engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 5th-largest privately owned company in the U.S...
and drafted Bechtel's $5 bn. reconstruction plan for the DRC known as "An Approach to National Development. Democratic Republic of Congo". The Bechtel plan was presented to the Congolese government in November 1997 and centred on natural resource-based partnerships in copper and cobalt, diamonds, tin, gold in the east of the country, along with hydro-electric development, forestry, oil and agriculture elsewhere. The Congolese government rejected the Bechtel proposal, devising its own three-year development plan, which it brought to a World Bank-sponsored "Friends of the Congo" meeting of seventeen countries as well as international institutions in Brussels in December 1997; donors pledged to commit $450m. of the $575m. that the DRC team was requesting from them, out of a total plan budgetted at $1.7bn. Also present at the December 1997 meeting in Brussels were the Canadian-registered mining companies Barrick Gold
Barrick Gold
Barrick Gold Corporation is the largest pure gold mining company in the world, with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and four regional business units located in Australia, Africa, North America and South America...
, America Mineral Fields, Tenke Mining
Tenke Mining
Tenke Mining Corporation was a mining company with head offices in Canada. The company's operations took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in South America. Tenke Mining was based in Vancouver, British Columbia...
, and International Panorama Resource Corp. In 1997, Stewart also became advisor, and then briefly in 1998, chairman of America Mineral Fields Inc., a company headquartered in Arizona, U.S.A., but incorporated in Canada (renamed Adastra Minerals Inc. in 2004). After the Congolese government's cancelation of America Mineral Fields' tender for the Kolwezi copper/cobalt tailings concession in early 1998, Colonel Willy Mallants, a former Belgian advisor to Mobutu and in 1996-97 economic adviser to Laurent Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo
Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo
The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire was a coalition of Congolese dissidents, disgruntled minority groups and nations that toppled President Mobutu Sese Seko and brought Laurent Kabila to power in the First Congo War...
, and Robert Stewart announced in Brussels, in May 1998, the establishment of the "Conseil de la République Fédérale Démocratique du Congo", with Stewart as "Economic, Industrial, Diplomatic and Financial Counsellor to the Council", with the aim to overthrow President Laurent Kabila within one year's time. At the Non-Aligned Movement
Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2011, the movement had 120 members and 17 observer countries...
summit in South Africa in September 1998, Stewart was identified as an advisor to the Council of the Federal Democratic Republic of Congo, a group of exiled Congolese technocrats that sought to restore democracy in their country, and Stewart claimed that a relative of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
had been granted Stewart's DRC mining concessions. While Stewart claimed at this meeting that President Kabila had "asked [American Mineral Fields] for bribes", American Mineral Fields denied this, adding that Stewart was dismissed shortly following his appointment. Stewart in 2008 was director of the South African-based TransAfrican Minerals Ltd., which reported copper, cobalt and gold holdings at the Kipushi Project in the DRC, and in 2009, Stewart was on the board of directors of the British Columbia-based junior company, ICS Copper Systems (now Nubian Resources Ltd.) which holds a stake in the Musoshi Tailings Project.
Since 1999, the Canadian armed forces contingent, dubbed "Operation CROCODILE", working with the United Nations MONUC peacekeeping force has not exceeded one dozen personnel, with the exception of 2003 when fifty Canadian Forces staff and two Hercules aircraft were deployed at the request of the UN to Bunia
Bunia
Bunia is a city in Democratic Republic of the Congo and is the headquarters of Ituri Interim Administration in the Ituri region of Orientale Province....
. From 1999 to 2008, Canada reportedly provided at least $20m. in support to peacebuilding exercises in the D.R. Congo, including for the 1999 Lusaka accord, the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, the Group of Friends of the Great Lakes Region, the 2006 elections, and the 2008 Goma Peace Process.
After having its gold properties expropriated by the Congolese government in 1998, Banro Resources successfully sued the DR Congo government in 2000 for $240m., which overturned a previous decision by a Congolese court, and involved the World Bank's
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes
International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes
The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes , an institution of the World Bank Group based in Washington, D.C., was established in 1966 pursuant to the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States...
in Washington, D.C.
Following earlier management of the D.R. Congo's state-owned mining enterprise Gecamines
Gécamines
Gécamines, or La Générale des Carrières et des Mines, is a state-owned mining company in the Democratic Republic of Congo . Its principal products are copper , cobalt and zinc...
by the Zimbabwean Billy Rautenbach
Billy Rautenbach
Billy Rautenbach, also known as Muller Conrad Rautenbach , is a multimillionaire Zimbabwean businessman. He is known for his aggressive business tactics and is believed to have close links to ZANU-PF and the government of Robert Mugabe...
(1998–2000) and the Belgian mining executive, George Arthur Forrest (1999–2001), the World Bank supported the appointment of Canadian corporate lawyer Paul Fortin as managing director of the parastatal in 2005, where he remained until his resignation in 2009. Fortin's tenure saw the negotiation of a mining contract originally valued at $6 billion in Katanga Province with Chinese investors, and the Congolese government's "revisitation" of mining agreements accorded under previous regimes, including ones signed with Canadian mining firms.
Comparative social indicators
In 2010, Canada was ranked eighth-highest among 135 nations representing 92 percent of the human population, according to the United Nations Development ProgrammeUnited Nations Development Programme
The United Nations Development Programme is the United Nations' global development network. It advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP operates in 177 countries, working with nations on their own solutions to...
Human Development Index
Human Development Index
The Human Development Index is a composite statistic used to rank countries by level of "human development" and separate "very high human development", "high human development", "medium human development", and "low human development" countries...
hybrid values, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo ranked second-last. The D.R. Congo, Zambia and Zimbabwe were the only three countries whose HDI values in 2010 fell below their 1970 values.
The following graphs decompose these trends into the three components, health, education, and income, suggesting that declines in per capita income are a key factor in lowering the D.R. Congo's HDI value:
Apart from endogenous variables including the Great Lakes region civil wars, high corruption and capital flight levels, and exogenous ones such as foreign company involvement in the DRC's resource conflicts, the child dependency ratio
Dependency ratio
In economics and geography the dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labor force and those typically in the labor force...
, that proportion of citizens between the ages of infancy and fourteen, relative to the 15- to 64-year-old population, has altered considerably since 1960 for Canada, but not for the D.R. Congo, and as such may contribute significantly to the divergence in income trends. The ratio for Canada more than halved from 1960 (57%) to 2010 (23%) while for the DRC it has risen from 82% (1960) to 98% (2000), declining slightly to 91% in 2010. The economically-active share of the Canadian population has grown to three and a half adults of working age for every child in 2010, while that for the DRC has maintained at roughly one adult for every child across the timespan. Recent estimates of the probability that a fifteen-year-old male will die before reaching the age of sixty (45q15) show virtually no change in the DRC, from 40.7% (1970) to 42.0% (2010), compared to a steady decline in Canada from 18.5% (1970) to 8.4% (2010).
Development co-operation
From 1960 to 2009, Canada committed a total of US$1.2 billion (constant 2008 dollars) in bilateral (country-to-country) development assistance to the D.R. Congo, of which $0.9 bn. (76%) was actually disbursed. This was a lower disbursement rate than for Canada's aid to all recipient countries, 87% ($99bn. out of $113 bn.). Although exact multilateral aid figures (to the African Development BankAfrican Development Bank
The African Development Bank Group is a development bank established in 1964 with the intention of promoting economic and social development in Africa...
, International Development Association
International Development Association
The International Development Association , is the part of the World Bank that helps the world’s poorest countries. It complements the World Bank's other lending arm — the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development — which serves middle-income countries with capital investment and...
, various UN agencies, etc.) from donor to recipient countries are not reported, the OECD has imputed these values, and they suggest that a higher proportion of Canadian aid to the DRC has gone through the latter channels than for most donor countries (29% vs. 26%). Total OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international economic organisation of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...
Development Assistance Committee
Development Assistance Committee
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee is a forum for selected OECD member states to discuss issues surrounding aid, development and poverty reduction in developing countries...
disbursements exceeded commitments by 13% over these five decades mainly because commitment figures were not reported until the year 1966 (and imputed multilateral data began in 1975). Canada reportedly provided US$10,000 in grants to Congo (Kinshasa) in each of the years 1960 and 1964 (approximately 0.1% of the total aid), in addition to financing faculty posts and university bursaries, and providing twelve Canadian technical assistance staff in the field of education. During this period, Adolphe Kasuvubu, a son of President Joseph Kasa-Vubu
Joseph Kasa-Vubu
Joseph Kasa-Vubu was the first President of the Republic of the Congo, today called Democratic Republic of the Congo....
was a Canadian External Aid scholarship recipient who studied at the University of Ottawa
University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...
. Although only 7% of total Canadian bilateral aid to the DRC has been in the form of loans, Canada has until recently carried higher tied aid ratios than most OECD DAC members, such that a large portion of the total Canadian aid volume was spent on Canadian goods and services; only in the last decade has the tying status declined, from 75% in 2000, to just 2% in 2009.
| Official Development Assistance from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Development Assistance Committee constant 2008 US $, billions |
||||||||||||||||||
| Bilateral | Imputed Multilateral | Total ODA | ||||||||||||||||
| Recipient: D.R. Congo | All ODA Recipients | Recipient: D.R. Congo |
All ODA Recipients |
Recipient: D.R. Congo |
All ODA Recipients |
|||||||||||||
| Commitments | Disbursements | Of which: Loans | Commitments | Disbursements | Commitments | Commitments | Commitments | Commitments | ||||||||||
| Canada | All DAC | Canada | All DAC | Canada | All DAC | Canada | All DAC | Canada | All DAC | Canada | All DAC | Canada | All DAC | Canada | All DAC | Canada | All DAC | |
| 1960-69 | $0.017 | $0.53 | $0.014 | $7.46 | $0.000 | $0.46 | $5.57 | $146.96 | $7.28 | $375.6 | $0.000 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.02 | $0.53 | $5.57 | $146.96 |
| 1970-79 | $0.355 | $6.63 | $0.118 | $5.74 | $0.058 | $0.84 | $22.88 | $454.04 | $16.76 | $333.9 | $0.056 | $1.15 | $5.51 | $74.30 | $0.41 | $7.78 | $28.39 | $528.34 |
| 1980-89 | $0.379 | $7.54 | $0.329 | $6.87 | $0.027 | $2.50 | $26.92 | $599.05 | $22.29 | $488.5 | $0.144 | $3.03 | $10.03 | $173.51 | $0.52 | $10.57 | $36.94 | $772.56 |
| 1990-99 | $0.060 | $2.65 | $0.084 | $2.79 | $0.000 | $0.75 | $25.70 | $679.21 | $24.35 | $548.5 | $0.066 | $1.19 | $8.57 | $166.42 | $0.13 | $3.83 | $34.27 | $845.62 |
| 2000-09 | $0.359 | $15.92 | $0.348 | $14.79 | $0.000 | $1.01 | $32.07 | $930.36 | $27.96 | $728.3 | $0.214 | $6.20 | $8.57 | $294.35 | $0.57 | $22.13 | $40.64 | $1,224.71 |
| 1960–2009 | $1.170 | $33.27 | $0.892 | $37.65 | $0.085 | $5.56 | $113.14 | $2,809.61 | $98.65 | $2,474.9 | $0.480 | $11.57 | $32.68 | $708.58 | $1.65 | $44.84 | $145.82 | $3,518.19 |
| Percentage of total ODA to the D.R. Congo, 1960–2009 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Canada | 70.9% | 5.1% | 29.1% | 100.0% | ||||||||||||||
| DAC | 74.2% | 12.4% | 25.8% | 100.0% | ||||||||||||||
| Percentage of total ODA to all recipients, 1960–2009 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Canada | 0.8% | 0.1% | 0.3% | 1.1% | 100.0% | |||||||||||||
| DAC | 0.9% | 0.2% | 0.3% | 1.3% | 100.0% | |||||||||||||
| Disbursements as a percentage of commitments, 1960–2009 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Canada | | |
76.3% | 87.2% | ||||||||||||||||
| DAC | 113.2% | 88.1% | ||||||||||||||||
Source
From 2000 to 2007, Canada canceled a total of CAN$79.1 m. in bilateral debt owed to it by the D.R. Congo. The above table shows that virtually all of the US$85 m. (constant 2008 US dollars) in loans made by Canada to the DRC occurred during the 1970s and 1980s. Export Development Canada
Export Development Canada
Export Development Canada is Canada's export credit agency. It is a Crown corporation wholly owned by the Government of Canada, which provides financing and risk management services to Canadian exporters and investors in up to 200 markets worldwide, with spread across all provinces in Canada, and...
has reported interest income of C$49 million from the Government of Canada relating to debt relief to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
During the period 1995 to 2009, Canada committed a total of US$395m. in constant 2008 dollars, for bilateral official development assistance
Official development assistance
Official development assistance is a term compiled by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to measure aid. The DAC first compiled the term in 1969. It is widely used by academics and journalists as a convenient indicator of...
(ODA) to the D.R. Congo, representing 2.4% of the $16.6bn. commitments to the DRC from all OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international economic organisation of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...
Development Assistance Committee
Development Assistance Committee
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee is a forum for selected OECD member states to discuss issues surrounding aid, development and poverty reduction in developing countries...
(DAC) donors. Canada's actual aid disbursements were two-thirds of its commitments, with available data for 2002-2009 showing Canada to have provided a total $202m., or 1.4% of total DAC disbursements of $14.7bn. Canadian ODA disbursements to the DRC represented 1.1% of the US$18.7bn. in total Canadian ODA disbursements to developing countries over 2002-09, and DRC aid from Canada was only one-half the contribution level that Canada made among all donors to developing countries, 2.7%.
| Total bilateral Official Development Assistance, constant 2008 US $, mill. |
||||||||
| Recipient: D.R. Congo | All ODA Recipients | |||||||
| Commitments | Disbursements | Commitments | Disbursements | |||||
| 1995 | $1.3 | $102.2 | .. | .. | $2,332 | $43,207 | .. | .. |
| 1996 | $4.7 | $88.4 | .. | .. | $2,106 | $46,752 | .. | .. |
| 1997 | $7.9 | $103.1 | .. | .. | $1,599 | $42,239 | .. | .. |
| 1998 | $17.3 | $130.7 | .. | .. | $1,961 | $46,962 | .. | .. |
| 1999 | $9.1 | $141.5 | .. | .. | $1,694 | $55,794 | .. | .. |
| 2000 | $13.7 | $192.8 | .. | .. | $2,060 | $59,642 | .. | .. |
| 2001 | $21.5 | $297.3 | .. | .. | $1,762 | $58,191 | .. | .. |
| 2002 | $36.7 | $437.1 | $12.2 | $533 | $2,810 | $68,635 | $1,016 | $60,129 |
| 2003 | $103.3 | $6,882.7 | $32.1 | $6,791 | $2,402 | $85,190 | $1,350 | $70,689 |
| 2004 | $16.6 | $1,432.2 | $17.0 | $1,405 | $3,125 | $83,984 | $2,401 | $72,200 |
| 2005 | $23.0 | $1,368.1 | $19.6 | $1,392 | $3,302 | $110,557 | $2,677 | $102,980 |
| 2006 | $48.0 | $1,800.7 | $31.9 | $1,651 | $2,774 | $113,864 | $2,209 | $97,131 |
| 2007 | $15.3 | $848.8 | $19.9 | $822 | $3,466 | $95,891 | $2,361 | $88,913 |
| 2008 | $29.7 | $1,225.4 | $20.4 | $989 | $3,707 | $114,039 | $3,270 | $98,566 |
| 2009 | $46.6 | $1,527.2 | $48.5 | $1,140 | $4,081 | $111,849 | $3,442 | $97,605 |
| TOTAL, 1995-2009 |
$394.9 | $16,578.3 | $39,179 | $1,136,795 | ||||
| TOTAL, 2002-2009 |
$319.2 | $15,522.2 | $201.6 | $14,724 | $25,666 | $784,008 | $18,726 | $688,213 |
| % of 2002-09 Totals |
2.1% | 100.0% | 1.4% | 100.0% | 3.3% | 100.0% | 2.7% | 100.0% |
Source
Although only four individual countries ranked among the top ten donors to the DR Congo in 2008-09 (the rest being multilateral agencies), for sixteen of the larger DAC members representing 87% of all DRC aid receipts, Canada ranked ninth-highest both in terms of total and per capita (donor nation) ODA disbursements to the DR Congo over 1960-2009, and in terms of ODA per Congolese citizen. In other words, when Canada's total direct aid to the DRC is divided by the Canadian population in 2009, each Canadian effectively provided $26 to the DRC over the last half-century, and Canada collectively provided $14 for every Congolese citizen, or about one-quarter of a dollar for each of the 66 million Congolese per year. In 2001/2002, the D.R. Congo was the tenth-largest recipient of Canadian bilateral ODA flows, at Cdn$25.2m., in 2004/2005, it was eighteenth (Cdn.$28.3m.), and in 2007/2008 it had fallen to the twenty-fifth position (Cdn$19.1m.). It rose to sixteenth position in 2009/2010 (Cdn.$37.3m.) In earlier decades, the D.R. Congo (Zaire) ranked below twentieth (1960–61), thirteenth (1965–66), below twentieth (1970–71 and 1975–76), eighteenth (1980–81), fifteenth (1985–86), eighteenth (1990–91), and below twentieth (1995–96) in Canadian bilateral assistance. In terms of overall development assistance (country-to-country, multilateral and debt relief), the D.R. Congo ranked fourteenth in 2009/2010 (Cdn.$), in the company of eleven other African nations in the top 20 recipients of Canadian aid that year, and fifth-highest in bilateral humanitarian aid receipts (Cdn.$22.7m.). Nevertheless, when the Canadian government announced in 2009 that it would begin concentrating eighty per cent of its international assistance resources on twenty countries, the D.R. Congo was excluded from the seven African designees. In terms of annual net ODA per capita from all donor nations, Congo/Zaire has gone from receiving 75% greater than the average for all sub-Saharan African nations during the 1960s (eighteenth-highest, US$5.9 in aid per Congolese per year, compared to US$3.8 per sub-Saharan African, current dollars), down to 82% less than the regional average in the 1990s (second-lowest, $6.8/Congolese vs. $28.5/sub-Saharan-African), and recovering to 27% below the average during 2000-2008 (twelfth-lowest, $29.9/Congolese vs. $38.8/sub-SaharanAfrican). The nadir in the 1990s followed the massacre of Lubumbashi student protesters in May 1990, when Belgium, the European Commission, Canada and the United States withdrew all except humanitarian aid to Zaire.
| total ODA disbursements, 1960-2009, constant 2008 US dollars, mill. |
% of total Development Assistance Committee disbursements |
Donor country population, 2009 millions |
ODA to DR Congo per donor country population, $ per capita |
ODA per 2009 DRC popn., $ per Congolese citizen |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium | $14,571 | 38.70% | 10.79 | $1,350.9 | $220.7 |
|||||
| Norway | $341 | 0.91% | 4.83 | $70.6 | $5.2 |
|||||
| Sweden | $616 | 1.64% | 9.30 | $66.3 | $9.3 |
|||||
| Netherlands | $1,073 | 2.85% | 16.53 | $64.9 | $16.3 |
|||||
| France | $2,669 | 7.09% | 62.63 | $42.6 | $40.4 |
|||||
| Germany | $3,120 | 8.29% | 81.90 | $38.1 | $47.3 |
|||||
| Denmark | $165 | 0.44% | 5.52 | $30.0 | $2.5 |
|||||
| Switzerland | $223 | 0.59% | 7.74 | $28.8 | $3.4 |
|||||
| Canada | $892 | 2.37% | 33.74 | $26.4 | $13.5 |
|||||
| Italy | $1,542 | 4.10% | 59.75 | $25.8 | $23.4 |
|||||
| United Kingdom | $1,369 | 3.64% | 60.93 | $22.5 | $20.7 |
|||||
| United States | $4,597 | 12.21% | 307.01 | $15.0 | $69.6 |
|||||
| Japan | $1,380 | 3.67% | 127.51 | $10.8 | $20.9 |
|||||
| Finland | $57 | 0.15% | 5.34 | $10.7 | $0.9 |
|||||
| Spain | $200 | 0.53% | 45.93 | $4.3 | $3.0 |
|||||
| Australia | $19 | 0.05% | 21.96 | $0.9 | $0.3 |
International development cooperation formed approximately one-half of the DRC's government revenue in 2010, and government revenue was responsible for 27.3% of GDP
Gross domestic product
Gross domestic product refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living....
.
The Canadian International Development Agency
Canadian International Development Agency
The Canadian International Development Agency was formed in 1968 by the Canadian government. CIDA administers foreign aid programs in developing countries, and operates in partnership with other Canadian organizations in the public and private sectors as well as other international organizations...
(CIDA) has reported involvement in 108 projects in the DRC between 1999 and early 2011, in the overlapping sectors of democratic governance (34), emergency assistance (33), private sector development (31), health (26), education (11), environment (10), and peacekeeping (5).
In 2011, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation recorded a total of fourteen Canadian civil society groups as active in the D.R. Congo: Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, Canadian Friends Service Committee, Canadian Nurses Association
Canadian Nurses Association
The Canadian Nurses Association is a federation of 11 provincial and territorial registered nurses associations representing more than 139,893 Canadian registered nurses and nurse practitioners...
, Canadian Red Cross
Canadian Red Cross
The Canadian Red Cross Society is a Canadian humanitarian charitable organization and one of 186 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies....
, CARE Canada, Canadian Centre for International Studies and Cooperation
Canadian Centre for International Studies and Cooperation
Canadian Centre for International Studies and Cooperation - non-profit organization helping poor countries and communities, promoting human rights defence and know how exchange for development...
, Collaboration santé internationale, Mennonite Central Committee (Canada) - Ottawa
Mennonite Central Committee
The Mennonite Central Committee is a relief, service, and peace agency representing 15 Mennonite, Brethren in Christ and Amish bodies in North America. The U.S. headquarters are in Akron, Pennsylvania, the Canadian in Winnipeg, Manitoba.-History:...
, Mining Watch Canada, Oxfam-Québec, Presbyterian World Service and Development, Terre Sans Frontières, World Relief Canada, and World Vision Canada.
Since 1984, Terre Sans Frontières, headquartered in La Prairie, Quebec, reports that it has delivered CDN$10 m. in aid projects to the Upper-Uele region of northern DRC, focusing on improved access to health, safe drinking water, education, and community economic development. Oxfam-Québec, present in the DRC/Zaire since 1984, in 2008 was collaborating with 16 Congolese counterpart organisations, employing two hundred Congolese nationals and fourteen Canadian volunteers in 27 development projects mainly in Orientale and Kivu provinces. L'Entraide missionnaire, based in Montreal, has participated since 1989 in missionary and development NGO working groups focusing on Congo-Kinshasa (Table de concertation sur les droits humains au Congo-Kinshasa) and the African Great Lakes regions (Table de concertation sur la région des Grands-Lacs), and has regularly presented evidence on Congolese human rights issues at sessions of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development
Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development
The Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development is a committee in the Canadian House of Commons. It focuses on foreign affairs and international development...
.
The Quebec-based Biotechnologie pour le développement durable en Afrique (BDA) is training Congolese farmers in Equateur and Bas-Congo to cultivate and harvest medicinal plants, including the antimalarial-containing margosa and armoise plants.
Of the US$214m. in Canada's imputed multilateral commitments to the D.R. Congo over 2000-2009, at least one-half (ca. US$103m.) has returned directly to the Canadian economy, in the form of Congolese-related World Bank consultancy and supply contracts to Canadian firms, International Finance Corporation
International Finance Corporation
The International Finance Corporation promotes sustainable private sector investment in developing countries.IFC is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States....
investments in Canadian companies active in the DRC, and one Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency is a member organization of the World Bank Group that offers political risk insurance. It was established to promote foreign direct investment into developing countries. MIGA was founded in 1988 with a capital base of $1 billion and is headquartered in...
investment to a Canadian firm mining copper in the DRC. CIDA's annual statistical reports for fiscal years 2000-2001 to 2009-2010 show a total of Cdn.$103.4 m., or US$84.3 m., in multilateral development assistance provided to the D.R. Congo by federal government departments other than CIDA; these funds principally derived from the Department of Finance's contributions to international financial institutions
International financial institutions
International financial institutions are financial institutions that have been established by more than one country, and hence are subjects of international law. Their owners or shareholders are generally national governments, although other international institutions and other organisations...
. Over the same period, CIDA made direct contributions totalling Cdn$14.4m. (US$10.4 m.) to eight D.R. Congo-related projects, for which the executing agency partner was the World Bank or International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
, including the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control, and the Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants. During the 2000s, financial inflows to Canada from World Bank group contracts in the DRC (US$103 m.) exceeded Canada's World Bank and IMF contributions to the DRC (US$95 m.) by eight per cent.
Trade
Based on the HS6 Harmonized SystemHarmonized System
The Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System of tariff nomenclature is an internationally standardized system of names and numbers for classifying traded products developed and maintained by the World Customs Organization , an independent intergovernmental organization with over 170...
international commodity classification, Canada's principal exports to the D.R. Congo over the last two decades have consisted of articles of second-hand clothing and other used textiles, followed by food (chiefly wheat, milk powder, and dried peas), and mining equipment and supplies. There was little fluctuation in the export profile between the two most recent decades.
| Principal Canadian Exports to the D.R. Congo | ||||||
| current U.S. dollars, millions | percentages | |||||
| 1990–2000 | 2001–2010 | 1990–2010 | 1990–2000 | 2001–2010 | 1990–2010 | |
| Second-hand clothing |
$40.66 | $69.37 | $110.03 | 45.3% | 47.1% | 46.4% |
| Food products |
$7.64 | $15.18 | $22.82 | 8.5% | 10.3% | 9.6% |
| Vaccines and Medical supplies |
$0.49 | $0.00 | $0.49 | 0.5% | 0.0% | 0.2% |
| Mining equipment and supplies |
$5.10 | $13.57 | $18.67 | 5.7% | 9.2% | 7.9% |
| Aircraft | $18.69 | $0.00 | $18.69 | 20.8% | 0.0% | 7.9% |
| Other | $17.19 | $49.27 | $66.46 | 19.1% | 33.4% | 28.0% |
| TOTAL | $89.76 | $147.39 | $237.15 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| TOTAL, DRC |
$89.76 | $147.39 | $237.15 | 0.004% | 0.004% | 0.004% |
| TOTAL, AFRICA |
$9,919 | $17,154 | $26,168 | 0.49% | 0.50% | 0.48% |
| TOTAL, WORLD |
$2,041,233 | $3,425,514 | $5,466,747 | 100.00% | 100.00% | 100.00% |
Source
During 2003-2007, Canada ranked between fourth- and seventh-highest in dollar value, among nations exporting worn clothing and other worn textiles, and in 2007 its global exports of this commodity were valued at US$187m. Canada's used clothing exports to the DRC, US$9.7m. in 2007, represented 3.5% of Canada's global total, and 28.1% of DRC's estimated used clothing imports of US$34.5m. In 2001, humanitarian groups working in rebel-occupied areas of the DRC reported to a United Nations Panel of Experts of "women in some villages who have simply stopped taking their children to the health centres because they no longer possess simple items of clothing to preserve their dignity".
Cobalt from the DRC dominated Canadian imports, however it, petroleum and diamonds were only prominent during the 1990s. The value of imports in the 2000s, chiefly from tropical wood products, was only 2.5% of the previous decade's.
| Principal Canadian Imports from the D.R. Congo | ||||||
| current U.S. dollars, millions | % | |||||
| 1990–2000 | 2001–2010 | 1990–2010 | 1990–2000 | 2001–2010 | 1990–2010 | |
| Cobalt | $151.32 | $0.42 | $151.74 | 91.5% | 10.3% | 89.5% |
| Diamonds | $2.71 | $0.43 | $3.14 | 1.6% | 10.5% | 1.9% |
| Lumber products |
$0.35 | $1.39 | $1.74 | 0.2% | 33.8% | 1.0% |
| Petroleum | $8.96 | $0.00 | $8.96 | 5.4% | 0.0% | 5.3% |
| Other | $2.06 | $1.86 | $3.93 | 1.2% | 45.4% | 2.3% |
| TOTAL | $165.41 | $4.10 | $169.51 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| TOTAL, DRC |
$165.41 | $4.10 | $169.51 | 0.009% | 0.000% | 0.003% |
| TOTAL, AFRICA |
$13,734 | $59,038 | $72,772 | 0.8% | 1.9% | 1.5% |
| TOTAL, WORLD |
$1,826,889 | $3,118,985 | $4,945,874 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% |
Source
When sorted according to the top twenty-five industry categories between 1992 and 2009, "other recyclable material[s]" (NAICS code 41819) head the list in every year except for 1995, representing 54.5% of all Canadian exports to the DRC, or US$119m. out of $219m. in nominal dollars. The mining industry ranked second, comprising 5.0% of exports to DRC, although during 2007 and 2008, it reached 9.9% and 14.4%, respectively.
According to statistics for 2007 published by the D.R. Congo's Division des Mines Nord-Kivu, of 24 foreign importers of cassiterite
Cassiterite
Cassiterite is a tin oxide mineral, SnO2. It is generally opaque, but it is translucent in thin crystals. Its luster and multiple crystal faces produce a desirable gem...
, wolframite
Wolframite
Wolframite WO4, is an iron manganese tungstate mineral that is the intermediate between ferberite and huebernite . Along with scheelite, the wolframite series are the most important tungsten ore minerals. Wolframite is found in quartz veins and pegmatites associated with granitic intrusives...
, slag
Slag
Slag is a partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to separate the metal fraction from the unwanted fraction. It can usually be considered to be a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. However, slags can contain metal sulfides and metal atoms in the elemental form...
and coltan
Coltan
Coltan is the industrial name for columbite–tantalite, a dull black metallic mineral from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral is columbite, hence the "col" half of the term...
from North Kivu province, one was registered as Canadian, B.E.B. Investment Inc. It imported 68.0 tonnes of cassiterite from the DRC's GMC comptoir (trading house) in 2007 at a value of USD197,200. This represented 0.7% of the total of 10,172 tonnes of Congolese cassiterite officially exported that year, and also 0.7% of these minerals' combined export value of USD20.7m. From January to September 2008, B.E.B. imported 464 tonnes of cassiterite, or 4.3% of the total 10,903 tonnes exported during that period. For all of 2008, the Ontario-based B.E.B. Investment Inc., managed by Eddy Habimana and Inyange Waza, imported 478,774 tons of cassiterite from GMC's official comptoir in Goma, and the material was acquired from the Bisie mining area. In 2010, BEB Investment (Wicklow) was one of ten cassiterite suppliers to tin smelters involved in ITRI, the UK-based tin industry group's tin traceability project known as the ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi). In 2000, the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo reported that a Canadian company, Banro Resources Corporation, had exported from the D.R. Congo, via Rwanda, cassiterite (tin) to Malaysia and Canada, and coltan to Malaysia. Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada is the Canadian federal government agency commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. Its headquarters is in Ottawa....
, however, has not recorded any tin (HS 260900, HS 282737, HS 8001-8007) or tantalum (HS 2615, 8103) imports from the DRC, nor from Rwanda or Uganda into Canada during 1990-2010, with the exception of US$240. of tin (HS 2007 - "articles of tin, not elsewhere classified") imported from Rwanda in the year 2005.
In 2009, two Quebec-based firms, Boa-Franc, S.E.N.C. and General Woods and Veneers Ltd., along with Ontario-based Weston Premium Woods Inc. imported a total of CDN $591,000 of products from the D.R. Congo.
Investment
In 2009, the D.R. Congo's Prime Minister reported that there were 22 Canadian companies operating in the country, employing 13,000 persons in the mining and energy sectors. Although earlier years' figures were suppressed to meet statutory confidentiality requirements, in 2010, the total Canadian direct foreign investment in the D.R. Congo was estimated by Statistics CanadaStatistics Canada
Statistics Canada is the Canadian federal government agency commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. Its headquarters is in Ottawa....
to be valued at Cdn.$123 mill., compared to $557m. invested in Ghana and $140m. in Nigeria, out of total Canadian investments in Africa for 2010 of $3.05 bill. The stock of total Canadian direct investment in Africa rose from C$2.2 bn. in 2003 (0.5% of total Canadian investment abroad) to C$5.6bn. in 2008 (0.9% of total FDI) and C$5.1bn. in 2009 (0.9%). Canada represented roughly five percent of the UNCTAD
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development was established in 1964 as a permanent intergovernmental body. It is the principal organ of the United Nations General Assembly dealing with trade, investment, and development issues....
estimate for global FDI stock in Africa of US$72.9bn. in 2008. Global FDI stock in the DR Congo was reported to have risen from US$617m. (2000) to US$2.5bn. (2008) and US$3.1bn. in 2009.
Non-extractive sectors
The Government of Canada's export credit agency, Export Development CanadaExport Development Canada
Export Development Canada is Canada's export credit agency. It is a Crown corporation wholly owned by the Government of Canada, which provides financing and risk management services to Canadian exporters and investors in up to 200 markets worldwide, with spread across all provinces in Canada, and...
, reported in 2008 furnishing the Quebec-based publisher Beauchemin International Inc. with a bank guarantee valued at under Cdn.$1m. for the sale of school manuals to the government of the D.R. Congo, financed through the Royal Bank of Canada. Beauchemin was awarded a US$4.9m. contract by the World Bank's International Development Association
International Development Association
The International Development Association , is the part of the World Bank that helps the world’s poorest countries. It complements the World Bank's other lending arm — the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development — which serves middle-income countries with capital investment and...
in 2009 for the provision of primary school mathematics textbooks to the D.R. Congo. Export Development Canada has also reported holding, since 2003, between C$44 million (2003) and C$49 million (2009) in impaired loans, received from the Government of Canada, and designated as reimbursement for debt relief to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The World Bank Contract Awards Search database records a total of 41 contracts awarded to fifteen Canadian firms and nine individuals between 2001 and March 2011, totaling US$26.5 m., out of a total of 1,157 contracts (US$1,711.4 m.) awarded globally for projects specifically designated for the "Democratic Republic of Congo". All but one of the Canadian contracts were for consultancy services, the exception being the aforementioned Beauchemin textbooks supply contract, and all were financed via the International Development Association
International Development Association
The International Development Association , is the part of the World Bank that helps the world’s poorest countries. It complements the World Bank's other lending arm — the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development — which serves middle-income countries with capital investment and...
arm of The Bank.
| World Bank Contracts to Canadian Companies for Projects in the D.R. Congo. 2001/01 - 2011/03 | |||
| Project Supplier | Number of Contracts | Total Contract Amount US $ millions | Project sectors |
|||
| Companies | | | |
|||
| ADA Consultants Inc. | 1 | $0.202 | Emergency Social Action Project; social services; education |
|||
| Association du Transport Aérien International (IATA) International Air Transport Association The International Air Transport Association is an international industry trade group of airlines headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where the International Civil Aviation Organization is also headquartered. The executive offices are at the Geneva Airport in SwitzerlandIATA's mission is to... | 1 | $0.396 | airlines public-private partnership feasibility study |
|||
| Beauchemin International | 1 | $4.947 | supply of primary school mathematics textbooks |
|||
| CCISD (Centre de Coopération Internationale en Santé et Développement) | 1 | $3.198 | management of HIV/AIDS projects |
|||
| CIMA International | 6 | $3.405 | Emergency Multisector Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project |
|||
| CIMA International/CANAC | 1 | $0.257 | road security; urban transport reform; Kinshasa ports rehabilitation; water supply |
|||
| CRC SOGEMA | 2 | $1.763 | Enhancing Governance Capacity (Cadre des dépenses à moyen terme) |
|||
| Developpement International Desjardins | 2 | $0.132 | Modernisation of the Centrale de Risques en RDC; banking; mining; transportation; telecommunications |
|||
| Gemacor International | 1 | $0.251 | private sector development and competitiveness ; banking; mining; transportation; telecommunications |
|||
| Groupement IATA. IOS Partners Inc. APS Aviation Inc. FIDAFRICA (PWC) | 1 | $0.300 | GET: Study for Civil Aviation Autonome Management Structure |
|||
| IDEA International | 1 | $0.290 | Establishing Capacity for Core Public Management; general public administration sector |
|||
| Optec Energie-Services Inc/DDH Environment Ltee | 1 | $0.086 | Environmental pre-audit; banking; mining; transportation; telecommunications |
|||
| SNC Lavalin | 2 | $0.607 | Environmental and Social Impact of Southern African Power; restoration of copper and cobalt mines |
|||
| Tecsult International | 6 | $8.044 | Restructuing of Gécamines; REGIDESO: Water Plant Treatment Study; forestry; road works |
|||
| Tormina Consulting Inc/Cecilia SIAC | 1 | $0.077 | Technical Assistance for the Revision of the Mining Code |
|||
| Sub-total | 28 | $23.955 | |
| Individuals | | | |
|||
| Balou, Rose | 1 | $0.223 | Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project (DDR) |
|||
| Bouchard, Serge A, | 3 | $0.690 | Enhancing Governance Capacity |
|||
| Conoir, Yvan | 1 | $0.070 | Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project |
|||
| Lemire. Martial | 1 | $0.313 | Mission d'assistance technique de L'ANAPI (Agence Nationale pour la Promotion des Investissements) |
|||
| Ouimet, Louise | 2 | $0.329 | Diagnostic study on the misfunctioning in the Prime Minister Cabinet; central government administration |
|||
| Rondeau, Guy | 2 | $0.610 | Pro-Routes Project; environmental consultancy; roads and highways |
|||
| Toornstra, Franke | 1 | $0.080 | Enhancing Governance Capacity (Ministères des Finances et du Budget) |
|||
| Ulrich, Patrick | 1 | $0.072 | Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project |
|||
| Voyer, Michel | 1 | $0.177 | The Emergency Social Action Project (PASU); management; planning; evaluation |
|||
| Sub-total | 13 | $2.564 | |
| TOTAL Canada | 41 | $26.519 | |
| TOTAL. All Supplier Countries | 1,157 | $1,711.43 | |
| % DRC contracts awarded to Canada | 3.6% | 1.6% | |
Source:
One "successful partnership" cited by a Trade Commissioner with Canada's diplomatic mission in Kinshasa took place over 1993-2004, when CIDA
CIDA
Things known by the initialism CIDA include:* Canadian International Development Agency* Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomia, Venezuelan institute of astronomical investigation* CIDA City Campus* Council for Interior Design Accreditation...
, the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
, and Société nationale d'électricité (SNEL)
Société nationale d'électricité (SNEL)
Société nationale d'électricité is the national electricity company of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its head office building is located in the district of La Gombe in the capital city, Kinshasa. SNEL operates the Inga Dam facility on the Congo River, and also operates thermal power...
, the Congolese state electrical energy agency, funded a partnership between the Canadian company Berocan International, Inc., and a Congolese counterpart, Projelec, which provided electrification
Electrification
Electrification originally referred to the build out of the electrical generating and distribution systems which occurred in the United States, England and other countries from the mid 1880's until around 1940 and is in progress in developing countries. This also included the change over from line...
for 2,500 subscribers and public lighting in the capital city of Kinshasa
Kinshasa
Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The city is located on the Congo River....
. Through CIDA and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Montreal-based Berocan received a total of CDN$890k. in federal government support during 1995-1999. Projelec also partnered in 2009 with Rosemère, Quebec-based LTCC hydro Inc. in a micro-hydroelectric power service on the Mpioka River to serve the Kimbanguist Christian
Kimbanguism
Kimbanguism is a branch of Christianity founded by Simon Kimbangu in what was then the Belgian Congo . The church's name is the Kimbanguist Church , and is a large, independent African Initiated...
community of Nkambe in Bas-Congo province.
MagIndustries Corp. (formerly Magnesium Alloy Corp.), a magnesium producer headquartered in Toronto, through its subsidiary, MagEnergy, refurbished turbines at the DRC's INGA II hydroelectric dam, and began receiving from DRC's electric utility, SNEL, in 2010 payments totaling U$240m. following a "protracted dispute"; they also report having carried out work at the Busanga hydroelectric site in Katanga Province. The company also claims that it holds a designated right to supply energy to the DRC's existing regional and international power grids. MagEnergy also reported in 2007 contracting the Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin to prepare a technical review in conjunction with MagEnergy's participation option in the DRC's Zongo II hydroelectric site.
Montreal-based SNC Lavalin reported in 2010 that it was awarded EP contracts
EPC (contract)
EPC stands for Engineering, Procurement and Construction.It is a common form of contracting arrangement within the construction industry. Under an EPC contract, the contractor will design the installation, procure the necessary materials and construct it, either through own labour or by...
(engineering and procurement) for mining projects in Katanga Province. The 2002 US$0.2m. World Bank contract related to the restoration of copper and cobalt mines. In 2003, the company reported completion of a World Bank-funded environmental impact study and resettlement plan for Congolese citizens affected by the construction of electrical transmission lines, and SNC Lavalin updated the study in 2008, which involved the DRC utility company SNEL's participation in the Southern African Power Pool. SNC Lavalin also supplied the DRC government in 2008 a pre-feasibility study, reportedly supported under a CIDA grant, for the DRC's INGA III hydroelectric facility, a proposal which SNC valued at $3.5bn., with a generating capacity of 4,320 megawatts.
Toronto-based Feronia Inc., a large-scale farmland and plantation operator, acquired in 2009 a 76% interest in palm oil plantations that were previously owned by Unilever
Unilever
Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products....
, on ten thousand hectares of arable farmland in Equateur
Équateur
Équateur is one of the ten provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is in the north of the country, and bordered the Republic of the Congo to the west, the Central African Republic to the north, to the east the Orientale province, and to the south the Kasai-Oriental, Kasai-Occidental, and...
, Orientale and Bas-Congo
Bas-Congo
Bas-Congo is one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the only province with a coastline and it borders Bandundu province to the east and Kinshasa to the northeast...
provinces; the company reported production of four thousand tonnes of crude palm oil, total DRC land concessions of one hundred thousand hectares, and began cultivation of edible beans in Bas Congo in 2010. In 2010, Toronto-based Navina Asset Management (name changed to Aston Hill Asset Management in 2011) held 13% and 10% stakes, respectively, in Plantation et Huileries du Congo and Feronia Inc., and fixed income assets in the Democratic Republic of Congo comprised Cdn$1.8m., or 13% of the portfolio's net asset value.
The American engineering consulting firm Aecom
AECOM
AECOM Technology Corporation is a professional technical and management support services firm. The company is ranked as the number one design firm for 2010 and 2011 by Engineering News-Record and number one by Architectural Record. It provides services in the areas of transportation, planning,...
, which acquired the privately-owned Montreal-based firm, Tecsult International, in 2008 for its hydropower expertise and employs 2,000 people in the province of Quebec, was awarded in 2011 a $13.4m. African Development Bank
African Development Bank
The African Development Bank Group is a development bank established in 1964 with the intention of promoting economic and social development in Africa...
contract to undertake a feasibility study into the Grand Inga hydroelectricity site in the DR Congo.
Laval, Quebec-based
Laval, Quebec
Laval is a Canadian city and a region in southwestern Quebec. It is the largest suburb of Montreal, the third largest municipality in the province of Quebec, and the 14th largest city in Canada with a population of 368,709 in 2006...
Corporation Carbon2Green received preliminary authorisation from the Congolese government in 2008 to undertake the cultivation of the biofuel
Biofuel
Biofuel is a type of fuel whose energy is derived from biological carbon fixation. Biofuels include fuels derived from biomass conversion, as well as solid biomass, liquid fuels and various biogases...
crop, Jatropha
Jatropha
Jatropha is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees , from the family Euphorbiaceae. The name is derived from the Greek words ἰατρός , meaning "physician," and τροφή , meaning "nutrition," hence the common name physic nut. Mature plants produce separate male and female...
, on degraded soils unsuitable for food production in Bandundu
Bandundu
Bandundu, formerly known as Banningville or Banningstad, is a city in Bandundu Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Bandundu is the capital of Bandundu Province. It is located on the north bank of the Kwango River, just below the juncture of the Kwango and the Kwilu, 8 km upstream from...
Province, to supply rural electrification projects in the DRC, and the company plans to explore methane gas recovery from Lake Kivu
Lake Kivu
Lake Kivu is one of the African Great Lakes. It lies on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and is in the Albertine Rift, a part of the Great Rift Valley. Lake Kivu empties into the Ruzizi River, which flows southwards into Lake Tanganyika...
. They are seeking to raise C$27.6m. in investment for these projects.
Mining
A 2006 survey published by the World BankWorld Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
estimated that the D.R. Congo holds the world's largest known cobalt
Cobalt
Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....
resources, and diamond
Diamond
In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...
resources by volume, and the second-largest copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
resources after Chile, and the majority of Canadian-domiciled mining companies active or previously active in the DRC are either exploring for, developing or undertaking large-scale mining of these copper and cobalt resources. Four Canadian companies, Anvil Mining Ltd., First Quantum Minerals
First Quantum Minerals
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. is a Vancouver, British Columbia based mining and metals company whose principal activities include mineral exploration, development and mining....
, Lundin Mining
Lundin Mining
Lundin Mining is a multinational minerals company with operations in Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Russia. Lundin Mining is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange as part of the S&P/TSX 60 index...
, and Katanga Mining Limited have been engaged in industrial copper and cobalt extraction operations during 2000-2010, and another eight junior Canadian mining companies including Ivanhoe Nickel & Platinum Ltd. and Rubicon Minerals Corporation, as of early 2011, were reporting active holdings of copper and cobalt concessions in Katanga province. Nine Canadian junior mining companies, among which are Kinross Gold Corp., previously held copper and/or cobalt concessions, but have since abandoned them, or had them acquired by other Canadian or South African firms.
Since 1996, Banro has held gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
concessions in South Kivu and Maniema
Maniema
Maniema is a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its capital is Kindu.Following the 2005 Constitution , 25 new provinces were to be created from the 10 current provinces within 36 months . As of October 2010, this had not taken place...
provinces of the DRC, while six other Canadian companies previously owned Congolese gold properties, including Barrick Gold
Barrick Gold
Barrick Gold Corporation is the largest pure gold mining company in the world, with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and four regional business units located in Australia, Africa, North America and South America...
(1996–1998), and Moto Goldmines
Moto Gold Mines
Moto Goldmines Limited was a gold exploration and mining company with operations in the Kilo-Moto greenstone belt in Ituri Province in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The company's stock was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative...
(2005–2009). In the diamonds sector, Montreal-based Emaxon Financial International Inc. is currently active, while seven other Canadian junior companies reported previous ownership of properties in the DRC during 2001-2009, including Canaf Group Inc. and BRC DiamondCore. Montreal-based Shamika Resources is exploring for tantalum
Tantalum
Tantalum is a chemical element with the symbol Ta and atomic number 73. Previously known as tantalium, the name comes from Tantalus, a character in Greek mythology. Tantalum is a rare, hard, blue-gray, lustrous transition metal that is highly corrosion resistant. It is part of the refractory...
, niobium
Niobium
Niobium or columbium , is a chemical element with the symbol Nb and atomic number 41. It's a soft, grey, ductile transition metal, which is often found in the pyrochlore mineral, the main commercial source for niobium, and columbite...
, tin
Tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...
and tungsten
Tungsten
Tungsten , also known as wolfram , is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74.A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as...
in the Eastern DRC and Loncor Resources is exploring for gold, platinum, tantalum and other metals. Two Canadian-registered companies own petroleum concessions in the DRC, Heritage Oil plc
Heritage Oil
Heritage Oil is an independent Jersey-based oil and gas exploration and production company. Its activities are focused on Africa, the Middle East and Russia. It is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. It has a secondary listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange....
, whose founder and Chief Executive Officer is Tony Buckingham
Tony Buckingham
Anthony Leslie Rowland "Tony" Buckingham is an oil industry executive with a significant share holding in Heritage Oil Corporation. Heritage is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange since 1999. Recently, Heritage listed on the London Stock Exchange. Buckingham's direct and indirect share holding is...
, and EnerGulf Resources Inc..
The Government of Canada's
Government of Canada
The Government of Canada, formally Her Majesty's Government, is the system whereby the federation of Canada is administered by a common authority; in Canadian English, the term can mean either the collective set of institutions or specifically the Queen-in-Council...
mining ministry, Natural Resources Canada
Natural Resources Canada
The Department of Natural Resources , operating under the FIP applied title Natural Resources Canada , is the ministry of the government of Canada responsible for natural resources, energy, minerals and metals, forests, earth sciences, mapping and remote sensing...
estimated that in 2009, Canadian-owned mining assets in the D.R. Congo were valued at Cdn.$3.3 billion, a ten-fold increase over 2001, and represented one-sixth of total Canadian mining assets on the continent of Africa, the second-highest share after Madagascar.
Of the six D.R. Congo projects, valued at a total of $59.7m., that have been funded up to early 2011 by the World Bank Group's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency is a member organization of the World Bank Group that offers political risk insurance. It was established to promote foreign direct investment into developing countries. MIGA was founded in 1988 with a capital base of $1 billion and is headquartered in...
(MIGA), the very first was made in 2005 to Canada and Ireland as co-investors, on behalf the Dikulushi Mine
Dikulushi Mine
The Dikulushi mine is a copper mine and silver mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is located some west of Lake Mweru and north of Kilwa in the Moero Sector of Pweto Territory, Katanga Province....
held by Anvil Mining Ltd. in Katanga Province; the project's value of US$13.6m. was a guarantee against political risks including expropriation and civil disturbance. Four of the nine D.R. Congo projects sponsored or proposed for sponsorship by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation
International Finance Corporation
The International Finance Corporation promotes sustainable private sector investment in developing countries.IFC is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States....
up to early 2011 were for Canadian-owned companies active in the DRC: to Kolwezi/Kingamyambo Musonoi Tailings SARL owned by Adastra Minerals Inc.
Adastra Minerals
Adastra Minerals Inc , was a London-based mining company with notable operations in central Africa , particularly in copper, cobalt and zinc exploration...
($50.0m., invested in 2006), Africo Resources Ltd. (acquisition of Cdn.$8m. in Africo shares, invested in 2007), and Kingamyambo Musonoi Tailings SARL as acquired by First Quantum Minerals Ltd., proposed in 2009 at a value of US$4.5 m. in equity funding.
In 2011, Canada's Fraser Institute
Fraser Institute
The Fraser Institute is a Canadian think tank. It has been described as politically conservative and right-wing libertarian and espouses free market principles...
annual survey of mining executives reported the DRC's ranking of its mining exploration investment favourability fell from eighth-poorest in 2006 down to second-poorest in 2010, among 45 African, Asian and Latin American countries and 24 jurisdictions in Canada, Australia and the United States, and this was attributed to "the uncertainty created by the nationalization and revision of contracts by the Kabila government".
Immigration and remittances
In Canada's 2006 census, 14,125 immigrants born in the DRC were recorded, half (6,910) of whom arrived since 2001, and this latter group comprised 0.6% of Canada's immigrant intake over 2001-2006, while the DRC population in 2005, 59.1 m., represented 0.9% of the world population. The 3,854 DR Congolese immigrants settling in the province of Quebec from 2003-2007 ranked fourteenth-highest, or 1.8% of immigrant intake from all countries. Of 285 immigrants from the DRC who had earned a degree there in a provincially-regulated occupation in Canada such as medicine, engineering or law, only 21% were actually employed in that profession in Canada, close to the average match rate for all immigrants of 24%. In 2008, an HIV-positive, D.R. Congolese man was granted asylum by the Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of CanadaImmigration and Refugee Board of Canada
The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada is an independent administrative tribunal. The IRB is responsible for applying the Canadian federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and for making decisions on immigration and refugee matters...
on the "person in need of protection" basis that, were he deported to the DRC, the government there would be unlikely to provide him with the antiretroviral medications necessary to sustain his life.
Congolese refugees in Canada have come typically from the provinces of Kasai
Kasai region
The Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is divided administratively into Kasai-Occidental and Kasai-Oriental. It shares its name with the Kasai River....
, Bandundu
Bandundu
Bandundu, formerly known as Banningville or Banningstad, is a city in Bandundu Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Bandundu is the capital of Bandundu Province. It is located on the north bank of the Kwango River, just below the juncture of the Kwango and the Kwilu, 8 km upstream from...
, Bas-Congo
Bas-Congo
Bas-Congo is one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the only province with a coastline and it borders Bandundu province to the east and Kinshasa to the northeast...
and the Kivu
Kivu
Kivu was the name for a large "Region" in the Democratic Republic of Congo under the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko that bordered Lake Kivu. It included three "Sub-Regions" : Nord-Kivu, Sud-Kivu and Maniema, corresponding to the three current provinces created in 1986...
s, belonging to the Luba
Luba people
The Luba are one of the Bantu peoples of Central Africa. They are indigenous to the Katanga, Kasai, and Maniema regions which were historic provinces of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo...
, Kongo
Kongo people
The Bakongo or the Kongo people , also sometimes referred to as Kongolese or Congolese, is a Bantu ethnic group which lives along the Atlantic coast of Africa from Pointe-Noire to Luanda, Angola...
, Mbala
Mbala
Mbala is Zambia’s most northerly large town and seat of Mbala District, occupying a strategic location close to the border with Tanzania and controlling the southern approaches to Lake Tanganyika, 40 km by road to the north-east, where the port of Mpulungu is located. It had a population of about...
, Hunde
Hunde
The Hunde are an ethnolinguistic group of about 200,000 people located in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Hunde live in the province of Nord-Kivu and the regions of Masisi and Rutshuru. The language of the Hunde is Kihunde, and alternate names are Kobi and Rukobi...
and Nande
Nande language
Nande, also known as Ndandi and Yira, is a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.The Nande of Congo and the Konjo people of Uganda are a single ethnic group, which they call Yira . They trace their origins to the Ruwenzori Mountains between the two countries. The languages...
ethnic groups, and about four-fifths make their home in Montreal. Annual intake of Congo refugees rose in Canada from under forty during the 1980s to over 700 in 1997; sixty percent of these refugee status applications have been accepted by the Canadian government, and 35-40% of refugee families reported being victims of torture or imprisonment in the DRC. The D.R. Congo is one of three African and three Latin American countries affected by internal conflict with which Canada presently has a moratorium on deportation of denied refugee status claimants, based on Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. However, there have been reports citing Canada Border Services Agency data that DRC and other moratoria nationals who were asylum claimants presenting themselves at the U.S.-Canada border have been refused entry.
Refugee status was granted by Canada to fifty-five hundred, female, D.R. Congolese asylum-seekers between 1993 and early 2009, of which forty-five percent involved claimant applications made overseas.
The Government of Quebec's Secrétariat à l’adoption internationale reported a total of 28 adoptions of children born in the DR Congo by families in Quebec over the period 1999-2009, constituting 0.4% of the province's 7,174 international adoptions over that time (2009: 7 out 27 for all Africa, and 477 for all countries; 2008: 3/23/400; 2007: 0/30/497, 2006: 0/14/528, 2005: 0/16/600, 2004: 5/n.d./817, 2003: n.d./n.d./908, 2002: n.d./n.d./817, 2001: n.d./n.d./745, 2000: 9/24/600, 1999: 4/n.d./785); unlike other countries of origin, no registered private adoption intermediary agencies were specified for the Congolese adoptees.
A World Bank survey of educational qualifications of immigrants to six high-income countries showed that DR Congolese immigrants to Canada have significantly higher levels of educational attainment than the average for all immigrants to Canada, where 71.0% of 313 Congolese immigrants in 1975 possessed a "high" educational level compared to just 40.5% for the overall Canadian immigrant sample of 2.76 m. persons, while in 2000, 83.5% of 5,505 Congolese immigrants had attained the "high" educational level, compared to 58.8% for the entire 4.60m. immigrant sample; in the 2000 sample, Canada ranked highest among 195 countries with 51.5% of its labour force having obtained the "high" level of education, while the D.R. Congo was ranked 17th-lowest, with a corresponding ratio of 1.3%. This suggests that not only did all Canadian immigrants in 2000 hold significantly higher educational qualifications than native-born citizens, but Congolese immigrants were nearly twice as likely as native Canadians to be highly educated.
The current state of relations
Between 1997 and early 2011, a total of 26 lobbying actions are recorded in the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada's Registry of Lobbyists database which included reference to the D.R. Congo or Zaire in the text of the registration; these were presented to various federal Canadian departments, on behalf of the companies Katanga Mining Ltd. (1 registration), and First Quantum Minerals Ltd. (6), and the non-governmental organizations, Canadian Council for Refugees (2), Canadian Council on Africa (1), Mennonite Central Committee Canada (1), the Rideau Institute (1), Oxfam Canada (7), Oxfam-Québec (2), World Vision Canada (5).During 2008-2009, retired Canadian Major Philip Lancaster served as Chief of the United Nations Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) initiative for MONUC
United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or MONUSCO , is a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which was established by the United Nations Security Council in resolutions 1279...
in Goma
Goma
Goma is a city in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the northern shore of Lake Kivu, next to the Rwandan city of Gisenyi. The lake and the two cities are in the western branch of the Great Rift Valley, and Goma lies only 13 to 18 km due south of the crater of the active...
in the eastern DRC. In early 2010, Dr. Lancaster was Coordinator of the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In April 2010, Michaëlle Jean
Michaëlle Jean
Michaëlle Jean is a Canadian journalist and stateswoman who served as Governor General of Canada, the 27th since Canadian Confederation, from 2005 to 2010....
, then Governor General of Canada
Governor General of Canada
The Governor General of Canada is the federal viceregal representative of the Canadian monarch, Queen Elizabeth II...
, paid a three-day state visit to the D.R. Congo, meeting with President Joseph Kabila Kabange
Joseph Kabila
Joseph Kabila Kabange is a Congolese politician who has been President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since January 2001. He took office ten days after the assassination of his father, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila...
and touring the CIDA-funded Ngaliema Clinic in Kinshasa, and visiting the North Kivu province governor Julien Paluku Kahongya
Julien Paluku Kahongya
Julien Paluku Kahongya is a politician of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the governor of North Kivu province.He was elected on 2007-01-27 by the North Kivu provincial assembly members to succeed Eugène Serufuli Ngayabaseka...
, Canadian members of the UN peacekeeping force MONUC
United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or MONUSCO , is a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which was established by the United Nations Security Council in resolutions 1279...
and the partially Canadian-funded HEAL Africa Hospital, in Goma
Goma
Goma is a city in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the northern shore of Lake Kivu, next to the Rwandan city of Gisenyi. The lake and the two cities are in the western branch of the Great Rift Valley, and Goma lies only 13 to 18 km due south of the crater of the active...
.
In May 2010, following two earlier rejections, Canada declined a United Nations request for Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie
Andrew Leslie
Lieutenant-General Andrew Brooke Leslie, CMM, MSC, MSM, CD is the Chief of Transformation of the Canadian Forces, and a former Chief of the Land Staff.-Background:...
to command the MONUC peacekeeping force comprising twenty thousand troops from twenty countries in Democratic Republic of the Congo; Canada has posted about a dozen soldiers with the mission.
Louise Ramazani Nzanga, the DR Congo's Ambassador to Canada from 2003 to 2010, thanked Canada in a farewell address for its support during the DRC's regional conflicts, in the 2006 Congolese elections, and its support through the Canadian International Development Agency
Canadian International Development Agency
The Canadian International Development Agency was formed in 1968 by the Canadian government. CIDA administers foreign aid programs in developing countries, and operates in partnership with other Canadian organizations in the public and private sectors as well as other international organizations...
; Dominique Kilufia Kanfua replaced Ms. Nzanga in 2010 as Ambassador to Canada.
In July 2010, despite Canada temporarily delaying a World Bank decision to cancel $12.3 bn. of the DR Congo's foreign debt on the grounds of the DRC's 2009 annulment of Canadian company First Quantum's $750m copper-cobalt Kolwezi mining agreeement, and Canada abstaining along with Switzerland from the vote, the Bank nevertheless approved the debt write-off decision. The DR Congolese Information Minister, Lambert Mende
Lambert Mende Omalanga
Lambert Mende Omalanga is the minister of communications of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is best known for saying that an overturned fuel truck that exploded and killed 230 people was trying to overtake a bus, but is also famous for saying 80 died when a boat overturned.- References :...
, was quoted as saying that "Canada did something that disrupted our efforts as it took a lot for us to meet the debt relief conditions, but we have no problem with them and we will follow our relations with them as usual". In its November 2010 press release, the Paris Club
Paris Club
The Paris Club is an informal group of financial officials from 19 of some of the world's biggest economies, which provides financial services such as war funding, debt restructuring, debt relief, and debt cancellation to indebted countries and their creditors...
, of which Canada is one of 19 permanent members, announced that it had approved cancelation of $6.1 bn. and rescheduling of another $1.5bn. of DRC's total external debt of $13.7bn., but expressed "concern over the business environment", noting that "[t]he case of the DRC raised the issue of non cooperative behavior from some litigating creditors".
Canada's Ambassador to Congo (Kinshasa), Anna Sigrid Johnson, met with the Congolese foreign minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba
Alexis Thambwe Mwamba
Alexis Thambwe Mwamba , is a Congolese politician who has been the Foreign Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2008....
in August 2010 and discussed the maintenance of security arrangements for Canadian investments in the country as well as on the validation and respect for Canadian contracts signed according to Congolese and international law in the mining, energy and commerce sectors.
In November 2010, the Canadian Association Against Impunity, composed of representatives from the Canadian Centre for International Justice, RAID
RAID (NGO)
RAID is an abbreviation of Rights & Accountability in Development. It is a Non-governmental organization, or NGO, based in Oxford, England. It was founded in 1997, with the aim of promoting "a rights-based approach to development".- Work :...
and Global Witness
Global Witness
Global Witness is an international NGO established in 1993 that works to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption, and human rights abuses worldwide. The organisation has offices in London and Washington, D.C.. Global Witness states that it does not have...
in the United Kingdom, and ASADHO and ACIDH in the D.R. Congo, initiated a class action complaint in a Montreal court on behalf of relatives and survivors of killings committed by the Congolese military of over seventy unarmed civilians in Kilwa, Katanga Province during 2004, for which the Canadian-incorporated Anvil Mining allegedly provided logistical support.
In December 2010, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...
deployed five unarmed police officers to the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a period of one year.
Canada has since 2004 abided by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1533-imposed sanctions on arms exports, military technical assistance to the DRC, in addition to assets freezes and travel bans to, in December 2010, 24 Congolese, Rwandans and Ugandans who are suspected of involvement in illegal armed groups or criminal activity, and are listed under UN Security Resolution 1952.
Stéphane Bourgon, a former Canadian Forces
Canadian Forces
The Canadian Forces , officially the Canadian Armed Forces , are the unified armed forces of Canada, as constituted by the National Defence Act, which states: "The Canadian Forces are the armed forces of Her Majesty raised by Canada and consist of one Service called the Canadian Armed Forces."...
and International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands...
lawyer from Repentigny, Quebec, during 2009 and 2010 represented former military leader and head of the National Congress for the Defence of the People
National Congress for the Defence of the People
The National Congress for the Defence of the People is a political armed militia established by Laurent Nkunda in the Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in December 2006. The CNDP was engaged in the Kivu conflict, an armed conflict against the military of the Democratic Republic...
(CNDP), Laurent Nkunda
Laurent Nkunda
Laurent Nkunda or Laurent Nkundabatware, or Laurent Nkunda Batware, or as he prefers to be called The Chairman — is a former General in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo and is the former warlord operating in the province of Nord-Kivu, sympathetic to Congolese Tutsis and the...
against allegations of war crimes at a military tribunal in Rwanda. Bourgon was appointed in 2010 as a communications director with the Canadian government-supported Rights & Democracy (International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development
International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development
The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development , is a non-partisan, independent Canadian institution that was established by an act of the Canadian parliament in 1988 to "encourage and support the universal values of human rights and the promotion of democratic institutions...
). In September 2010, the Congolese-Canadian lawyer Nicole Bondo Muaka, a member of the Toges Noires (Black Gowns) human rights group, was detained for one week by Congolese authorities on suspicion of collusion during an attack on DRC President Joseph Kabila's motorcade by members of an outlawed opposition party. Following four decades in the federal Canadian civil service, former Canadian Ambassador to Zaire and UN Special Envoy Raymond Chrétien joined in 2002 the Canadian international corporate law firm of Fasken Martineau as a strategic advisor.
Common memberships
Canada and the Democratic Republic of the Congo both hold membership in a number of multinational organizations including:- Food and Agriculture OrganizationFood and Agriculture OrganizationThe Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is a specialised agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and...
- Francophonie
- International Development AssociationInternational Development AssociationThe International Development Association , is the part of the World Bank that helps the world’s poorest countries. It complements the World Bank's other lending arm — the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development — which serves middle-income countries with capital investment and...
- International Monetary FundInternational Monetary FundThe International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
- International Olympic CommitteeInternational Olympic CommitteeThe International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
- InterpolInterpolInterpol, whose full name is the International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation...
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and DevelopmentOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and DevelopmentThe Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international economic organisation of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...
- United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
- UNESCOUNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
- World Health OrganizationWorld Health OrganizationThe World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
- World Trade OrganizationWorld Trade OrganizationThe World Trade Organization is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which commenced in 1948...
- World BankWorld BankThe World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
Quotations
- James H. Smith, cultural anthropologist, University of California, Davis, in 2011: "[F]oreign gold-mining companies, like the Canadian gold company Banro, exercise a great deal of power in the Eastern Congo, and some Congolese blame these companies (Banro, specifically) for the Congolese government's slowness to develop road infrastructure in the region (they claim these gold companies do not want Congolese people to have access to the mines and would prefer to use their own planes to fly back and forth). But these gold companies cannot exercise this kind of dominion over a substance like coltan because of its material properties."
- Vivian Danielson, journalist, and director, Madison Minerals Inc., Vancouver, in 2011: "In early 2010, the DRC government's mining registry suspended First Quantum's permit for the Frontier copper mine. First Quantum saw this action as retaliatory and 'without legal basis.' The company responded by closing the mine, which opened in 2007 after an investment of $226 million, and began international arbitration through the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, First Quantum significantly reduced its exposure to Africa by acquiring advanced projects in less risky jurisdictions, notably Australia, Peru and Finland. [...] Today, only a handful of junior companies remain in the DRC. Major companies are wary too, as analysts have almost doubled their discount rate on DRC projects (up to 20%) in the wake of negative publicity from the First Quantum and Freeport reviews."
- Andy Hoffman, Globe and Mail journalist, on the 74% acquisition of Canada's Katanga Mining Ltd. by Switzerland's Glencore International AG, in 2009: "The TSX rules prohibiting the excessive dilution without a shareholder vote won't apply in the case of Katanga, which says it is relying on the financial hardship exemption. It argues this will permit it to issue the 953 million shares to Glencore, even though the deal is a related-party transaction between Katanga and one of its major shareholders. 'This is outrageous,' said Manny Drukier, an 80-year-old retiree in Toronto who owns roughly 18,000 Katanga shares. Last year, with the price of copper and cobalt soaring, Katanga's market value climbed to more than $2-billion. Besieged by financial woes and a crash in commodity prices, it has since plunged to less than $100-million. Under the new financing plan, the number of Katanga shares outstanding will increase from approximately 206 million to a jaw-dropping 1.1 billion. The public float of the company, once headquartered in Toronto but now based in London, will shrink from an already thin 34 per cent of total shares to just 6 per cent."
- Raymond Chrétien, former Canadian Ambassador, including to Zaire (1978-1981) and the United States (1994-1996); United Nations Special Envoy to Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, 1996; Partner and Strategic Advisor, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, speaking to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, in 2009: "If responsible Canadian companies are deterred from investing abroad, it could negatively impact important foreign development opportunities. In my time serving as Canada's ambassador to a number of developing countries that have mining sectors, including, inter alia, Mexico and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I've observed many times that Canadian mining companies very often contributed to improved health, education, and infrastructure in those countries. They were thus welcomed and well regarded for such investments." "In practice, also, I'm worried about the inspections to carry a visit to Sudan or the Kivu in the Congo to investigate a mining company. What will happen? The [Department of Foreign Affairs] doesn't have resources. It would probably have to hire consultants, lawyers, accountants, make them a team, try to give them some kind of proper security clearance, try to get them a visa to go to the Congo. The Congolese would say, 'Listen, you're coming here to investigate a Canadian company employing Congolese. We have a say in this. We want to be part of that investigation'. That takes months, just to get it going. These guys would arrive at the embassy in Kinshasa. What would happen there? Our ambassador would take them to the foreign ministry to meet their counterparts. The Congolese would have to be part of that team. Then they would head towards the Kivu. How do you go to the Kivu? There's a flight a week. There's a civil war there, people are dying. You're going to carry out an investigation in the Kivu, in a mine. Suppose you can do it—I'll give you the credit for this. Then what do you do? You come back to Kinshasa, back to Ottawa. You try to write a report out of the chaotic situation you have faced down there. Then what do you do with this report? The report will go from the inspectorate to the deputy minister to the minister. Then the minister will say, 'What's this? I agree.' Or 'I don't agree.' If he were to agree with that report, what will he do with it? All of this, Mr. Chairman, is not at all clear. That's why I'm worried about the huge confusion, the kind of huge snafu that would be created if the guidelines were not much better than they are right now."
- Clive Newall, President, First Quantum Minerals Ltd.First Quantum MineralsFirst Quantum Minerals Ltd. is a Vancouver, British Columbia based mining and metals company whose principal activities include mineral exploration, development and mining....
, on DRC's Katanga copper belt, in 2009: "C'est le Graal de l'industrie du cuivre. Les entreprises disent : peu importe le risque politique, nous nous devons tout simplement d'être présents." [It's the Holy Grail of the copper industry. Companies say, no matter the political risk, we simply must be there.] - Africa Canada Accountability Coalition, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, in 2009: "Despite formidable links to the DRC, the [Government of Canada] has, since 1996, disregarded UN requests for peacekeeping support in this region, failed to secure meaningful women's participation in peace processes and failed to allocate aid dollars to effective programs that support rape survivors in the DRC. In the last three years, the [Government of Canada] has withdrawn its political support for peace processes in this region, cut its direct aid to the region and instructed its foreign service not to use the terms 'gender equality,' 'justice for victims,' and 'international humanitarian law' when referring to survivors of rape in the DRC."
- Philip Lancaster, former Canadian military major and head, United Nations demobilisation program in the DRC during 2007-2008, in 2009: "By attacking civilians, [the 7,000 rebel fighters in the eastern DRC] were able to force the MONUC military to disperse into very thin defense positions across the country, which left [the rebels] free to move in between, knowing that [the UN] wouldn't react, that they had no mandate to react in an aggressive way". "Canadian diplomats that were there [in the DRC] showed no interest at all [in committing to arrest the rebel fighters' 'vicious cycle' of violence]. I would regularly brief diplomats from the UK, U.S., European Union, Belgium, occasionally France. Never saw a Canadian. I tried, no interest."
- Kelly Patterson, Canadian journalist, in 2006: "Three former employees of a Canadian mining company should face prosecution for complicity in war crimes, a Congolese military judge has ruled. Canadian Pierre Mercier, former general manager of Anvil Mining Ltd.'s Congolese subsidiary, as well as two South African former employees, are accused of having 'knowingly facilitated the commission of war crimes' by the Congolese military when it suppressed an uprising near Anvil's Dikulushi mine, killing at least 70 civilians in 2004. [...] Last year, Anvil confirmed it lent a plane and vehicles to the army, but said it 'had absolutely no choice' but to accede to a government request for logistical support. 'When the army arrives with AK-47s ... you give them what they want,' said Anvil spokesman Robert LaValliere, recalling that troops had commandeered vehicles at gunpoint in a previous clash with rebels earlier that year. He added that companies are obliged by law to comply with Congolese government requests."
- Cécile Rousseau, Department of Psychiatry, Montreal Children’s Hospital, in 2004: "Many [refugee] men [from the DRC who have settled in Canada] express their desire to be part of Quebec’s future, which would mean being recognized by society and beginning to put down roots in their new home. Recognition is very hard to achieve, however, and repeated failures are often experienced as rejection — [a] form of exclusion. Notwithstanding the official Canadian line on assimilation and multiculturalism, migrants cannot hope to escape their marginalized status in the short term. For some, attempts to participate in Quebec society; to them this is equivalent to a total failure of their migration plan: 'If this country doesn’t give me a chance to dream, I don’t know how I can stay here.' (37-year-old man)."
- Madeleine Drohan, Canadian journalist, in 2004: "Just down the street from First Quantum in Lubumbashi is the home and office of Pierre Mercier, a Canadian working for the [Canadian-incorporated] Australian company Anvil Mining. Before I am allowed through the metal gates, a policeman checks my credentials. Inside the high walls are extensive gardens and a villa whose every window is covered by thick iron bars. 'Many nights, you don't sleep,' admits Mercier, who comes from Black Lake, Que. He describes a long-running argument he had with government officials who wanted to take a cut of Anvil's tax payment. 'It took us two months to agree where we would pay it. And they were so mad at us because we put it in the government bank account. They touched nothing.' Another Canadian mining executive in the Congo, who asks to be nameless, says his life was threatened when he refused to hire certain people: 'They phoned me up and said if I did not use the people they wanted me to use, they would kill me.' Peter Ewert, head of the small Vancouver company Costamin Resources, was shot and his companion killed in 2003 when they were driving back to Lubumbashi from his concession. The speculation in the mining community was that he had crossed a powerful official while trying to establish a viable mine. Mercier says it takes Anvil five times as long to do things because he will argue the legal point rather than pay a bribe. A new mining code, sponsored by the World Bank, is supposed to make things easier, but the constant requests for bribes continue. 'The problem is, civil servants get close to nothing,' he explains. 'So the only way to get something is [for them] to try to put a stick in your spokes, and if you want the stick out, you have to pay something.' All the Canadians I interview in Katanga insist they do not pay bribes and scrupulously follow Congolese law. They do things according to the law of the land. But one has to remember these laws were passed by governments led by dictators and rebel leaders."
- Bill Turner, President & CEO, Anvil Mining Limited, in 2004: "In order to adequately support anticipated future growth and development opportunities, a corporate reorganization was completed in June 2004, which involved a redomiciling of the company to Canada, followed by new listings of the new Canadian holding company, Anvil Mining Limited, on the Toronto (TSX), Australian (ASX) and Berlin Stock Exchanges. The reorganization included an initial public offering in Canada, which raised C$7 million. The redomiciling to Canada is seen as an important step for the future development of the Company, which now has access to a much larger mining capital market and one in which a greater proportion of equity funds raised, is destined for African projects."
- Robert S. Stewart, former Canadian diplomat, chairman of American Mineral Fields Inc., and representative of Bechtel International Inc. in Africa, in 1999: "Forty-three Canadian companies—including Banro Resource Corp. of Toronto, Barrick Gold Corp. of Toronto, Tenke Mining Corp. of Vancouver, International Panorama Resource Corp. of Vancouver and First Quantum Minerals Ltd. of Vancouver—have lost more than $15-billion in mining claims in the past year. Lawsuits abound at courts in Washington, Brussels, Kinshasa and Johannesburg. Congo is the world's largest producer of diamonds, cobalt and tropical hardwood, and a major producer of gold, tin, copper, coffee and tea. Canadian companies have lost more than $18-billion in exports, imports, construction, investment and trade in Congo. [...] There is a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize sitting on the table for the first time since Lester Pearson won it in 1957 for the Suez crisis. Canadian peacekeepers have the skills and knowledge gained from Uganda's Entebbe airport, Rwanda and eastern Congo. Canadian companies have invested more than $100-million in the region in the past year. All of this will be lost if the Canadian government sits on its hands, as it did in 1994 and 1996, and lets the wheels of war spin out of control across the African landscape."
- Robert Block, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal, in 1997: "The importance of Gecamines to the rebel cause will be highlighted this week, when $50 million dollars from Tenke Mining Corp., a Canadian firm, is transferred to Gecamines. The money is a down payment to Gecamines to develop what may be the world's largest copper and cobalt deposits between the villages of Tenke and Fungurume, 110 miles northeast of Lubumbashi. Mr. Mawampanga [Laurent Kabila's U.S.-trained high commissioner of finance] says most of that money will go to the war effort. 'What good is investing in the mines if we don't win the war?' Mr. Mawampanga says."
- Laurent-Désiré KabilaLaurent-Désiré KabilaLaurent-Désiré Kabila was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from May 17, 1997, when he overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko, until his assassination by his bodyguards on January 18, 2001...
, head of the Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo-Zaïre (ADFL), and President of the D.R. Congo (1997-2001), referring to the Canadian diplomat and UN Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, Raymond Chrétien, in 1996: "M. Chrétien (l'émissaire des Nations unies) m'ignore, et c'est une grave erreur car le pouvoir, c'est nous. Nous sommes incontournables. [Mr. Chrétien ignores me, and this is a grave mistake because we are now the real power. We are unstoppable.]" - William Grant StairsWilliam Grant StairsWilliam Grant Stairs was a Canadian-British explorer, soldier, and adventurer who had a leading role in two of the most controversial expeditions in the history of the colonisation of Africa.-Education:...
, Canadian engineer, mercenary, and commander of Belgium's Katanga Expedition, at Fort Bodo, 21 August 1888: "Last night the same gang of Wasangora who stole my tobacco returned with the object of looting more. [...] At a signal we all three fired, reloaded, and gave them three rounds each. [...] This morning I cut off the heads of the two men and placed them on poles one at each exit from the bush into the plantation. This may prevent further attempts of the sort for some time and so save life ...". At Bunkeya, 29 December 1891: "The country is now quiet and breathes freely since relieved from the brutal tyranny of [Katangan king] Msiri. No more heads will be stuck on poles, ears cut off, or people buried alive, if I can help it. [Missionaries] Thompson, Crawford and Lane will have free scope, and no longer be Msiri's 'white slaves,' as he told me they were. [...] all the country is joyful over the death of Msiri".
Diplomatic offices
Both nations maintain direct high-level diplomatic representatives. Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo in OttawaEmbassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Ottawa
The Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Ottawa is the Democratic Republic of the Congo's embassy in Canada. It is located at 18 Range Road in Ottawa, the Canadian capital. Louise Nzanga Ramazani serves as Minister-Counsellor and Chargé d'Affaires .-External links:, Department of Foreign...
Embassy of Canada to Congo in Kinshasa
See also
- Foreign relations of CanadaForeign relations of CanadaThe foreign relations of Canada are Canada's relations with other governments and peoples. Canada's most important relationship, being the largest trading relationship in the world, is with the United States...
- Foreign relations of the Democratic Republic of the CongoForeign relations of the Democratic Republic of the CongoIts location in the center of Africa has made the Democratic Republic of the Congo a key player in the region since independence. Because of its size, mineral wealth, and strategic location, Zaire was able to capitalize on Cold War tensions to garner support from the West...
- Canadian mining in the Democratic Republic of the CongoCanadian mining in the Democratic Republic of the CongoThis article describes extractive sector companies that are incorporated in Canada and are either currently or previously active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It encompasses mining and petroleum companies, both those carrying out commercial, large-scale extraction operations, and junior...
Further reading, viewing and listening
Text- Abadie, Delphine. 2010. "Le Canada en République Démocratique du Congo : « ô mes amis, il n’y a nul ami... »", Alternatives International Journal, 2 août 2010.
- Bellemare, Sarah. 2010. "Témoignage de Sarah Bellemare, coopérante volontaire en République démocratique du Congo", Oxfam-Québec, Dungu, RDC, le 15 avril 2010.
- Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. 2010. Inspection of the Canadian Embassy Kinshasa June 1-5, 2009, 2010-02-21. Internally-conducted departmental review of Canada's diplomatic and trade mission to the D.R. Congo, including 38 recommendations.
- Macharia, Bodia. 2010. "Say No To Canadian Troops For Congo and Yes To Canadian Diplomacy", Friends of the Congo website, 21 Apr 2010 . Congolese-born Macharia, president of Friends of the Congo at the University of Toronto, proposes five alternatives to a Canadian peacekeeping force in the DRC.
- Africa Canada Accountability Coalition. 2009. "The Worst Place in the World to be a Woman or Girl" – Rape in the DR Congo: Canada, Where Are You?, Policy Position and Discussion Report, Vancouver. A detailed critical review of Canadian foreign policy in the D.R. Congo from 1960 to 2009.
- Engler, Yves. 2009. The black book of Canadian foreign policy, Black Point, N.S.: Fernwood, p. 179-191. Detailed survey of Canada - D.R. Congo relations from 1891-2009.
- Kavungu, Aristote. 2009. Une petite saison au Congo, Paris: L'Harmattan. A novel by a Congolese-Canadian writer and teacher about revisiting the D.R. Congo after twenty years' absence.
- Lancaster, Phil; Dallaire, Roméo. 2009. "The Failure of Humanity - Reprise", LGen the Honourable Roméo A. Dallaire, Senator, Articles, Senate of Canada, February 2009. Excerpt: "If we as Canadians want to speak up and be heard as part of an international effort to save lives and mitigate the effects of conflict in DRC, or indeed in Darfur, we must understand that the credibility of our voice depends on what we are prepared to do, not only on what we are prepared to say."
- Spooner, Kevin A. 2009. Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960-64, Vancouver: UBC Press.
- Braeckman, Colette. 2008. "La Gécamines revit grâce à la Chine", Le Soir (Belgium), 1er mars 2008, p. 24. Interview with Canadian mining lawyer Paul Fortin about his directorship of DRC's GecaminesGécaminesGécamines, or La Générale des Carrières et des Mines, is a state-owned mining company in the Democratic Republic of Congo . Its principal products are copper , cobalt and zinc...
, from 2006-2009. - Wijeyarante, Surendrini. 2008. Promoting an inclusive peace, a call to strengthen Canada’s peace-making capacity, Ottawa, Ont.: CCIC, Canada’s Coalition to End Global Poverty. Conclusion: "In Afghanistan, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda (just to name a few examples), Canada has been engaged in supporting peace efforts. In spite of such efforts, at present the government’s institutional mechanisms to support peace processes and peace-building, its funding envelopes, and inter-departmental strategies, lack sufficient clarity and stability."
- Cooper, Andrew F. 2005. Adding 3Ns to the 3Ds: lessons from the 1996 Zaire mission for humanitarian interventions, Waterloo, Ont.: Centre for International Governance Innovation. Abstract: "At the core of the paper is the contention that Canada needs to cast its involvement in humanitarian interventions through a less bureaucratically driven approach. What is required instead is a fuller appreciation of contextual considerations."
- Olson, Leanne. 1999. A cruel paradise: journals of an international relief worker, Toronto: Insomniac Press. The chapter, "Zaire" (p. 155-200), describes Canadian nurse Olson's 1996 mission in eastern Zaire with Médecins Sans FrontièresMédecins Sans Frontières' , or Doctors Without Borders, is a secular humanitarian-aid non-governmental organization best known for its projects in war-torn regions and developing countries facing endemic diseases. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland...
.
Video
- AfriqueCanada.tv, Montreal-based video website, covering African-Canadian affairs. Features interviews with DRC presidential candidates visiting Canada in 2011, coverage of Congolese-related social actions, etc.
- Delmos, Monika. 2008. Everybody’s children, Toronto: National Film Board of Canada, 51 min. 27 s. Documentary featuring a 17-year-old Congolese refugee living in Toronto.
- Marceau, Karina. 2008. Pilote sans frontières: République démocratique du Congo, Montréal: Ciné-Fête, 2008, 23 min. Documentary featuring Canadian pilot Stéphan Bihan's work with the humanitarian agency Terre sans frontières and Avions Sans Frontières in the Dungu-Isiro-Aru region of northern DRC, flying emergency patients to hospital and delivering medical supplies to remote villages.
- Mignault, Pierre. 2008. Shock Waves, Montréal, Québec: National Film Board of Canada, 52 min. Documentary on Congolese military, and Radio Okapi.
- Callender, Adrian; Vale, George. 2005. Rocked: Sum 41 in CongoRocked: Sum 41 in CongoRocked: Sum 41 in Congo is a 2005 film documentary directed by Adrian Callender describing the experiences of Sum 41, as they take a break from the music to join War Child Canada in traveling to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a look at the African country where the rage of war has held a...
, Toronto: War Child Canada, 50 min. Documentary of Canadian band Sum 41's visit in 2004 to the D.R. Congo.
Audio
- Radio Okapi. 2009. "Le Canada réticent sur le climat des affaires en RDC", Echos d’économie programme, MONUSCO-supported (formerly MONUCUnited Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of CongoThe United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or MONUSCO , is a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which was established by the United Nations Security Council in resolutions 1279...
) Congolese radio station, November 29, 2009, from 10:58 to 17:34 of audio file. Interview in French with Canadian Ambassador to D.R. Congo, Sigrid Anna Johnson, on Canada, the DRC investment climate and IMF debt cancelation.
External links
- Government of Canada – Canada - Democratic Republic of Congo Relations
- Canadian International Development Agency: Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Centre for Intercultural Learning, Cultural Information - Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- Anvil Mining
- First Quantum Minerals
- Katanga Mining
- Lundin Mining
- Feronia Inc.
- Agir Ensemble pour la Paix au Congo (Montréal)
- Communauté Congolaise de Montréal
- L'Amicale des jeunes Congolais du Canada
- Oxfam-Québec
- L'Entraide missionnaire (L'EMI)