|
As Paul Martin prepares to take the reins as Canada's new prime
minister in Ottawa this month, Canada's current foreign
environmental policies will be on trial in London.
Tomorrow, a panel of five Privy Councillors,
Britain's highest court of appeal, will hear a case brought by
Belizean environmentalists and business owners against the approval
of Canadian-backed plans to build a 50-metre-high concrete
hydroelectric dam in the rainforests of this small Central American
country.
If completed, the Chalillo dam would not only
flood one of the world's most important wilderness areas and drown
irreplaceable traces of the ancient Maya civilization, but will put
12,000 people living downstream at risk.
The project sponsor, Newfoundland-based Fortis,
Inc., monopoly owner of Belize's electricity utility, has close ties
to the governments in Ottawa and Newfoundland, and just bought up
distribution utilities in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.
Two years ago, Fortis rammed approval of the
project through using a flawed environmental assessment that was
secretly paid for by Canada's foreign aid arm, the Canadian
International Development Agency.
This deal was part of CIDA's private-sector
branch "CIDA, Inc.," whose real mission appears to be "poverty"
—alleviation for some of Canada's largest and most powerful
companies — the Halliburtons of Canada.
In papers submitted to the court, Fortis now
admits that the taxpayer-sponsored report was wrong about the
geological foundations underpinning the dam.
The report said the dam would be built on solid
granite, when, in fact, the site is made of fractured sandstones and
shales — a dam designed on the basis of the CIDA report could
collapse and cause disaster downstream.
When CIDA, Inc. was confronted with this, and
other flaws in its report, last year on CBC's Disclosure, the agency
denied it did anything wrong.
Now the dam is under construction, and the
consequences of CIDA's flawed assessment are becoming evident.
The low flow of the river, reaching just knee
deep in the rainy season, makes it apparent that the dam will not
provide a fraction of the electricity CIDA's report projects.
Contractors at the site have found no granite
at the site to crush as an ingredient to make concrete for the dam.
In addition, locals say that seismic tremors
caused a 20-metre deep gaping hole to open at the site, and
construction workers drilled through to water flowing underground.
Experts warn that this could drain the dam's
reservoir before it is filled.
And, most troubling, the continued uncertainty
about the dam's foundations has raised the spectre of dam collapse,
and potential liability for Fortis and the Canadian government.
Regrettably, CIDA continues to bury its head in the sand, and Fortis
seems undeterred.
That's because Fortis seems to be protected.
A 50-year contract with the Belizean government
guarantees the company at least $200 million U.S. in electricity
sales from the dam, by forcing the dam's high costs onto Belizean
ratepayers.
Already, Belizeans pay the highest electricity
rates of any country in Central America — nearly two times more than
their neighbours in Guatemala or Mexico, even though half of their
electricity is imported at low cost from Mexico.
Tomorrow, the Privy Council will be asked to
stop the dam's construction until proper studies are completed and
Belizeans' right to a fair and impartial public hearing is upheld.
But Canada should not wait for the Privy
Council's decision to live up its responsibilities and repudiate
past mistakes.
"Poverty alleviation" should not be a cloak for
lopsided contracts that provide huge profits to a Canadian company
and endanger and further impoverish the people of Belize.
The new prime minister will be off to a good
start if his minister for international development ends CIDA's
complicity with Fortis, recalls its flawed taxpayer-sponsored report
and works to protect the people of Belize, as well as the tapirs,
scarlet macaws and jaguars that are at risk from this unjustifiable
dam.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is an
environment activist and author whose articles have appeared in The
New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire,
the Washington Post and numerous other publications.
|
