07) SAVE TEZTAN BINY!

People's Voice Editorial, Dec. 1-31, 2011

     The struggle over Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) is a microcosm of issues which are central to the future of Canada and indeed the entire world. Similar issues arise around other projects, such as plans to boost exports of tar sands oil to satisfy the energy demands of U.S. imperialism.

     As reported in this issue, Taseko Mines has submitted a "revised" proposal for a gold and copper mine on the Chilcotin Plateau in northern British Columbia. The project would turn Teztan Biny and other bodies of water into tailings ponds, causing permanent damage to trout stocks and other wildlife, and to the surrounding area. Even Stephen Harper's former environment minister Jim Prentice called a federal assessment of the project "probably the most condemning I have ever read."

     This dispute raises two crucial questions. First: just because a mineral deposit has been discovered, should corporations be allowed to "develop" such resources in the interests of their shareholders, regardless of consequences? In our view, the clear answer must be "No." The future of our world depends on halting the unchecked capitalist plunder of natural resources in pursuit of private profits. The rights of human beings and the natural environment must trump the greed of corporations.

     Second: like most of British Columbia, Teztan Biny is on unceded aboriginal lands, in this case the ancestral territories of the Tsilhqot'in Nation. For them, Teztan Biny is an important spiritual place, which would be destroyed by twenty years of open pit mining. The government of Canada is obliged by the Constitution to protect First Nations, a commitment reinforced by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The national rights of aboriginal peoples must take priority over the corporate drive to rip gold out of the earth.

(The above  article is from the December 1-31, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)