Search: 12/2005

On December 9, 2005, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz met with Mario Tema, an indigenous Maya leader from Sipacapa, Guatemala, and Magali Rey Rosa of the Guatemalan environmental organisation MadreSelva. Representatives of Friends of the Earth Canada, Oxfam America, and the Bank Information Center were also present.

On March 24, 2005, Treasury Board President Reg Alcock said, “Ottawa is making sweeping changes to the way it regulates Canadian business to help firms compete at home and abroad in the face of lagging productivity growth, rapid scientific advances and emerging global juggernauts such as China.”

MiningWatch Canada has been informed that on Saturday, December 10, local residents set fire to, and destroyed, at least one building owned by the Canadian mining company Ascendant Copper Corporation in Ecuador. According to the Ecuadorian daily El Comercio, more than 300 residents, including representatives from a range of local communities, set fire to the building in a compound described by Ascendant as a demonstration farm. This action was apparently taken to protest development of Ascendant’s proposed Junín mine.