Contesting natural resource development in Canada: the legacies and limits of the staples approach (original) (raw)
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Natural resource development in northern Canada
Journal of Rural Community Development, 2014
This paper examines the role that the search for and removal of non-renewable fossil fuels plays in northern, often Aboriginal, communities in Canada. Such settlements at the social, political, and geographic “periphery” or “frontier” of Canada are often characterized by transient populations and social welfare challenges. While the economic boom brought about by oil and gas development is undeniable, it is unevenly spread. Further, communities that would otherwise be facing sizable challenges now must address even greater and more urgent struggles. These rural and remote settlements have drawn strength from their social cohesion, but presently, the strain is heightened. Insiders may be at odds with outsiders; one generation may be divided against the generation before and after it. Environmental concerns and traditional culture may be displaced by competing interests. In this paper we provide an overview of the existing and proposed extraction of non- renewable natural resources in...
Canadian Political Science Review, 2007
Political economists have typically understood the forest sector as part of the Canadian staples economy: early European settlers used forests for fuel, farming and construction purposes, and industry began later to cut raw timber and manufacture pulp and paper for export. According to the staples narrative, introduced by William Mackintosh and elaborated by Harold Innis, in order to settle the land and extract its resources, including forest products, colonists and settlers built an entire society and economy “organized around the labour force, technological regime, legal order, and financial system needed to serve the ends of resource extraction”. Building upon Innis’ work, a nationalist political economy school has criticized the domination of the Canadian resource economy by foreign capital, markets and technology, and advocated a ‘made-in-Canada’ industrial strategy. Studies on the forest sector have been especially prominent in probing the contingencies, specificities, and pos...
Introduction: Critical perspectives on extractive industries in Northern Canada
The Extractive Industries and Society, 2016
This essay introduces a special section on extractive industries in northern Canada, with a special focus on mining. The papers in the special section reflect critically on the impact of mining on northern indigenous communities in Canada, and on the historical environmental changes associated with the industry. Drawing on historical and contemporary cases studies of community responses to mining at the production and remediation phase of development, the papers suggest collectively that historical conflicts over mining development can influence contemporary responses to large-scale projects. The introductory essay provides a brief historical summary of mining in northern Canada, and a critical analysis of major themes in the literature. The essay connects the regional and local case study papers in the special sections with much broader themes in the scholarly literature on mining in Northern Canada and elsewhere. 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Journal of Rural and Community Development, 2014
This paper examines the role that the search for and removal of non-renewable fossil fuels plays in northern, often Aboriginal, communities in Canada. Such settlements at the social, political, and geographic “periphery” or “frontier” of Canada are often characterized by transient populations and social welfare challenges. While the economic boom brought about by oil and gas development is undeniable, it is unevenly spread. Further, communities that would otherwise be facing sizable challenges now must address even greater and more urgent struggles. These rural and remote settlements have drawn strength from their social cohesion, but presently, the strain is heightened. Insiders may be at odds with outsiders; one generation may be divided against the generation before and after it. Environmental concerns and traditional culture may be displaced by competing interests. In this paper we provide an overview of the existing and proposed extraction of non- renewable natural resources in several parts of northern Canada and examine their economic impact, but also their social impact. In particular, we focus on their ramifications in terms of community cohesion in general and on Aboriginal communities more specifically.
Neoliberal settler colonialism, Canada and the tar sands
Abstract: The Canadian government commenced the treaty-making process with the Indigenous peoples of the Athabasca region in 1870, motivated by the Geological Survey of Canada’s reports that petroleum existed in the area. This, in addition to the discovery of gold in the Klondike region, spurred an influx of unregulated settlement and resource extraction in the north. The trajectory of this history has continued to bring the Canadian settler state – and its oil industry stakeholders – into negotiation with indigenous Nations over the Athabasca tar sands. Currently contested is Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway project, which aims to move oil from the Edmonton, Alberta area by way of two massive pipelines covering 1,170km to Kitimat, British Columbia, where it would then be transported to Asia-Pacific markets by super-tankers. This paper examines the widespread criticism of the project from Indigenous and environmental groups, as well as responses to these objections by public/private partnerships between Enbridge, federal and provincial governments and their national security and counter-terrorism forces. It argues that recognising and naming contemporary forms of white settler colonialism, including these types of neoliberal partnerships, is required for new relations to become possible. Keywords: #IdleNoMore, Athabasca, Chief Theresa Spence, Enbridge, Northern Gateway Pipeline, oil sands, tar sands, Yinka Dene Alliance
Conflict, Capture, and Inequity: A Case for the Resource Curse in Alberta
On Politics, UPS, 2020
In this paper, the resource curse will be investigated beyond economic symptoms in an effort to understand the more comprehensive social and political consequences of the curse. More precisely, do high resource rents in Alberta inhibit democracy, encourage conflict, and/or erode institutional capital? The structure of this paper will be to (1) define the resource curse and the framework applied in this research; (2) define ‘good governance’ measures; (3) briefly illustrate some features of Alberta’s political economy before and after oil dependency; (4) illustrate the effects of oil development on public equity; (5) illustrate how corruption and private oil interests have ‘captured’ some public institutions; and (6) illustrate how the resource curse leads to a type of ‘violent conflict’ which is neglected by the current discourse. All things considered, Alberta’s once progressive democracy has been considerably weakened by a dependence on oil and gas development, which can be understood through socio-economic, institutional, and political indicators; thus, the resource curse is not entirely limited to rentier states nor the Global South.