Patricia Adams is an economist and the Executive Director of Probe International, an independent think-tank and watchdog over the environmental consequences of Canadian government and corporate activities around the world. Her books include In the Name of Progress: The Underside of Foreign Aid, (Doubleday 1985), and Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption and the Third World”s Environmental Legacy (Earthscan 1991), which exposes the jeopardy of years of loose lending for both the Third World’s environment and their economies, and proposes a legal remedy to place responsibility for the Third World’s debt crisis on the parties involved, instead of on First and Third World taxpayers. Pat also edited the English language translation of Yangtze! Yangtze!, the extraordinary critique by Chinese experts of the Three Gorges dam that inspired the democracy movement when it was first published in 1989, led to the postponement of the dam, and was subsequently banned by Chinese authorities. Her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Bahasa Indonesia.
(July 19, 2002) Acres International responds to Probe International’s June 27, article, "The Canadian connection." Acres’ says its case highlights the risks Canadian companies face in developing countries, and the need to ensure they receive due process.
(June 27, 2002) A corruption trial in Lesotho should be forcing Canadian agencies to re-examine their relationships with firms that engage in bribery. Instead, the indifference it is being greeted with indicates little has changed.
(June 21, 2002) Patricia Adams’ speech from her 12-city speaking tour of Germany in June 2002, at the invitation of the German Jubilee Network.
(March 12, 2002) Four men detained for attempting to petition authorities in Beijing about corruption in the Three Gorges resettlement operation remain in prison, one year after their arrest.
(November 29, 2001) Export Development Act – Third Reading in the Senate Bill to Amend introduced Motion in Amendment – Vote Deferred until December 4, 2001.
(November 21, 2001) Bill C-31 will allow EDC to write the rules, establish the criteria, define the terms, assess itself, and then decide whether or not it is justified in supporting a project that will destroy the environment.
An exclusive Three Gorges Probe report reveals extraordinary new detail about endemic corruption, debauchery and an underworld that now plagues the Three Gorges dam resettlement operation.
(June, 29, 2001) Probe International’s report on EDC’s draft disclosure policy.
(June 1, 2001) Probe International argues that the Canadian government’s growing predilection for secrecy is alarming. Probe recommends that the disclosure of information on public interest grounds should prevail over corporate interests.
(March 8, 2001) Probe International’s Patricia Adams called to Indonesia to talk odious debts.
(February 23, 2001) For creditors to expect any protection for their loans to foreign states, their loans must be utilized for the needs and interests of the state; otherwise the loans belonged to the power which contracted them, and were therefore, debts of the regime.
(July 6, 2000) The OECD is tired of Canada’s EDC flouting international trade rules, writes Patricia Adams. Now the clock is ticking toward a confrontation.
(May 26, 2000) Before anybody gloats too much about Canada’s recent "victory" over Brazil in the matter of aircraft subsidies, it might be wise to reflect that little has changed for the main victims of the Liberals’ reflexive urge to meddle in trade and industry — us.
(February 1, 2000) In the last remaining tropical rainforest of Colombia’s Caribbean coast, the Embera Katio indigenous people are fighting for their survival and for compensation for the destruction of their rainforest. The Urrá dam, built in part with financing from Canada’s Export Development Corporation, is the cause of their woes.
(August 20, 1999) ‘Corruption has to be tackled head on,’ declared Diane Marleau, Canada’s minister for foreign aid this spring, two months after Canada adopted the OECD’s anti-corruption convention by making bribery of foreign public officials a criminal offence. But on the eve of the world’s first foreign aid-related corruption court case — one involving Canadian engineering giant Acres International — the government agencies concerned mostly appear to be abdicating responsibility.
