The Ottawa Citizen
March 19, 2000

Crown agency spends billions secretly backing environmentally destructive projects others won’t touch Export Development Corp. ‘will do anything,’ critic says; EDC VP insists agency ‘routinely’ turns down projects that are environmentally ‘risky’
(Excerpt)

Canada’s federal Export Development Corp. is using secret loans — and billions in taxpayer dollars — to underwrite foreign mega-projects that are plundering the planet, say leading environmental experts.

“They have no rules. They will do anything. They go where others fear to tread,” says Patricia Adams, an economist, author and executive director of environmental watchdog Probe International in Toronto.

The target she attacks most fiercely, among dozens, is the world’s largest power dam, now under construction in China.

“Three Gorges is the worst example. All the other export credit agencies were staying away until Jean Chretien told the EDC to go ahead. After that, they jumped in.”

Ms. Adams, and colleagues from Ottawa, Washington and China, have condemned Three Gorges as a corruption-ridden financial fiasco involving the forced relocation of 1.3 million Chinese people. The dam will flood rich river lowlands and create a reservoir longer than Lake Superior.

The World Bank and two U.S. counterparts of the EDC have refused to fund it. But the EDC has committed $170 million to support two Canadian companies supplying power station equipment such as turbines, generators and computers. Both General Electric and SNC-Lavalin gave major donations to the federal Liberal party.

Between 1992 and 1998, General Electric, of Lachine, Que., gave $66,730 to the federal Liberal party. SNC-Lavalin, which is providing computers to the Three Gorges project, donated $295,817 in political contributions for the same period.