Canada–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations

Canada–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations are the bilateral relations between Canada and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Canada has an embassy in Kinshasa and D.R. Congo has an embassy in Ottawa.

While the Canadian government provided in 2009 US$40 million in development aid to the DRC, Canadian companies held US$4.5 billion in mining-related investments there, making the DRC the first or second-largest African destination for Canadian mining activities at the end of the 2000s.Miron, Michel. 2010. "Africa: Cumulative Canadian Mining Assets" (calculated at acquisition, construction or fabricating costs, and includes capitalized exploration and development costs, non-controlling interests, and excludes liquid assets, cumulative depreciation, and write-off), Minerals and Metals Sector, Natural Resources Canada, internal document. The Government of Canada has reported 28 Canadian mining and exploration companies operating in the D.R. Congo between 2001 and 2009, of which four (Anvil Mining, First Quantum Minerals, Katanga Mining, Lundin Mining) were engaged in commercial-scale extraction, with their collective assets in the DRC ranging from Cdn.$161 mill. in 2003 up to $5.2 bill. in 2008, and these companies were supported in 2009 by Canadian and Quebec public pension plan investments of Cdn.$319 mill. Natural Resources Canada valued Canadian mining assets in the DRC at Cdn.$2.6 bn. in 2011.

In 2010, Canada's temporary delay and abstention from a World Bank decision to cancel most of the D.R. Congo's external debt and complete the review of the DRC's Extended Credit Facility, was officially based on Canadian concerns over reform sustainability adversely affecting DRC's investment climate and development objectives. While Canada's actions drew criticism from the Congolese government, diplomatic relations were not deemed to have been impaired.
Canada also expressed concerns over the DRC's relations with Canadian companies, and the abstention was reportedly linked directly to First Quantum's legal proceedings.

In addition to a total of 2,200 Canadian military personnel deployed to Congolese and Zairean conflicts during 1960–1964 and 1996, individual Canadians have had significant roles in the history of the Congo, including:
# Leading the military conquest of the Katanga region for Belgium's King Leopold II in 1891: William Grant Stairs.
# Printing, from 1903 to 1908, the very first books to be published in the Lingala language, a language which became a lingua franca of the D.R. Congo, with 25 million speakers worldwide: Mère Marie-Bernadette.
# Leading diplomatic and military missions of the United Nations to Zaire and the D.R. Congo during the 1990s and 2000s: Raymond Chrétien, 1996; Maurice Baril, 1996 and 2003; Philip Lancaster, 2008–2009 and 2010.
# Political counsel to President Laurent Kabila during 1997–1998: former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark.
# Plotting, unsuccessfully, an overthrow of Laurent Kabila's government in 1998: Robert Stewart.
# Management and partial privatization of the D.R. Congo's national mining company, Gécamines, 2005–2009: Paul Fortin.
# Legal representation for former military leader Laurent Nkunda against allegations of war crimes at a military tribunal in Rwanda, 2009–2010: Stéphane Bourgon.

History

In 1887, William Henry Faulknor, a young Canadian from Hamilton, Ontario who had joined the Plymouth Brethren evangelical movement, arrived at Bunkeya, in Katanga, a centralized state ruled by Msiri; Msiri employed Faulknor and other missionaries as "errand boys", symbols of his influence, while Faulknor taught and converted a small group of redeemed slaves.

William Grant Stairs (1863–1892), a Canadian born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and educated at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, was a civil engineer, explorer and mercenary who was appointed by Belgium's King Leopold II to lead an expedition in 1891 of four hundred men which captured the Katanga (Shaba) copper territories for Belgium. Contemporaneous accounts of the expedition reported that during a confrontation, Katanga's king Msiri was shot dead and then decapitated, the head placed on a stake by Stairs's forces.Saffery, David. 2007. "Introduction to 2007 edition", in: Joseph A. Moloney. ''With Captain Stairs to Katanga: Slavery and Subjugation in the Congo 1891–92'', London: Jeppestown Press, p. x-xi, . Stairs then began reorganising affairs, appointing Msiri's son Mukandavantu (Mukanda Bantu) to replace Msiri, and securing the Congo State's authority over a fifty-mile radius.Slade, Ruth. 1962. ''King Leopold's Congo: aspects of the development of race relations in the Congo Independent State'', Oxford University Press, p. 134-135, . Stairs himself died of malaria only six months later while on trek to the coast, in Chinde, Mozambique, and was buried there. The Brethren missionaries including Faulknor made no attempt to obstruct Stairs's campaign and relied on the Belgian military following Msiri's defeat. Faulknor left Katanga in 1892, and returned to Canada.Stairs, William G. 1998. ''African exploits: the diaries of William Stairs, 1887–1892'', Roy Maclaren, ed., McGill-Queen's University Press, p. 374m 379, . The Canadian Baptist Mission (Mission des Baptistes Réguliers du Canada) established a presence in the Congo in 1926, and had two missions in southern Léopoldville Province in 1946.

Possibly the earliest Canadian woman to live and work in the Congo was a Catholic missionary and book printer from Quebec: Mère Marie-Bernadette (née Bernadette Beaupré) was born in 1877 in Saint-Raymond, entered the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in 1894, and died in Boma, Congo Free State in 1908, from trypanosomiasis.Anonymous. ''La Grâce du travail: L'imprimerie, la peinture, la chasublerie, filage et tissage, tapis et tentures, la dentelle, la broderie, chez les Franciscaines missionnaires de Marie'', Vanves: Impr. franciscaine missionnaire, 1937, p. 9-10, 17.Rade, Paul. 1932. ''Dans la fôret congolaise'', Grande Allée, Québec: Stella Maris, Imprimerie des Franciscaines Missionnaires de Marie, p. 289-290. On her departure for the Congo, Soeur Marie-Bernadette was destined for an orphanage to be founded at the mission station of Stanley-Falls, however she was posted downriver at Nouvelle-Anvers instead, arriving there on 27 July 1900. Having received training in typesetting while at the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary institute in Vanves, France,
De Blarer, M -T. 1932. ''À vol d'oiseau : récits missionnaires : suivis de Comment s'est fondée une mission chez les antropophages ic', Québec (Province): s.n., Collection Stella Maris, p. 215. Marie-Bernadette was designated in 1901 by Égide De Boeck (1875–1944), the Scheut missionary and vice-director of the colonial boarding school at Nouvelle-Anvers, to undertake the printing and binding of the very first books to be published in the Lingala language; these grammars, lexicons, religious tracts and hymn books were authored by De Boeck,Michael Meeuwis. 2009. "Involvement in Language: The Role of the Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae in the History of Lingala", ''The Catholic Historical Review'' 95(2): 240-260. and by Father Camille Van Ronslé.Starr, Frederick. 1908. ''A Bibliography of Congo languages'', Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 25-26, 63. With a very limited supply of type, only one page could be printed at a time, however at least eight volumes in Lingala were published under Marie-Bernadette's guidance, beginning in 1903 with ''Mambi makristu'' hings Christianby Van Ronslé and ''Buku moke moa kutanga Lingala'' ittle book for reading Lingalaby De Boeck. One century later, Lingala, which De Boeck had constructed from elements of Bangala and other Bantu languages including Bobangi, Mabale and Iboko, has 25 million speakers worldwide, and has become a lingua franca in both the D.R. Congo and the Republic of the Congo.

In Canada, church groups in Victoria and Ottawa contributed to the European condemnation of the atrocities committed by King Leopold II against Congolese slave labourers, in the form of a letter written to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, calling upon Britain to "secure to the people of the Congo Free State due protection and justice", and this public pressure ultimately led in 1908 to Leopold's relinquishment, and creation of the Belgian Congo colony.Spooner, Kevin A. 2009. "Canada, the Congo crisis, and UN peacekeeping, 1960–64", Vancouver, UBC Press, p. 13-16, 128-130, 224 n.13.

In 1939,Bothwell, Robert. 1984. ''Eldorado, Canada's national uranium company'', Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 107-116, 434. the United States purchased 1,200 tons of uranium oreRotter, Andrew J. 2008. ''Hiroshima: The World's Bomb'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 63, 112. from the Union Minière du Haut Katanga's Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo,Groves, Leslie R. 1962. ''Now it can be told: the story of the Manhattan Project'', New York, N.Y. : Da Capo Press, 9831962. that was warehoused on Staten Island, New York City.Gray, Earle. 1982. ''The Great Uranium Cartel'', Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, p. 19-29. The Canadian municipality of Port Hope, Ontario was site of the former radium producer and, at that time, sole North American uranium refiner, Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited, which between 1941 and 1946 provided a steady supply of refined uranium oxide to the Manhattan Project. In 1942, the Canadian government acquired Eldorado, making it a crown corporation in 1944. Eldorado's initial supplies were derived from uranium concentrates at Port Hope that had accumulated as tailings from its past radium operations, and, beginning in 1942, refined from newly mined ore shipped from its re-opened Great Bear Lake pitchblende mine in the Northwest Territories.Nixon, Alan. ''Canada's Nuclear Fuel Industry: An Overview'', Science and Technology Division, November 1993, Depository Services Program, BP-360E, http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/bp360-e.htm (accessed April 19, 2011). Eldorado in addition refined at Port Hope the US's Congolese ore stockpile that had been shipped from the New York storage facility, and further shipments of ore from the Congo. The 1,100 tons of Canadian-mined uranium, and 3,700 tons from the Congo that were refined in Canada, along with 1,200 tons from Colorado, comprised the six thousand tons of uranium oxideNorris, Robert S. 2002. ''Racing for the bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's indispensable man'', South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Press, p. 327. that formed the Manhattan Project's raw materials for the fissionable cores of the uranium-235 and plutonium-239 atomic bombs that were released and exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, immediately killing an estimated thirty percent of Hiroshima's civilian and military population, and resulting in an estimated total of 293,000 fatalities in the two cities, from both the immediate blast and long-term radiation exposure.

The Belgian Congo became, after the Second World War, one of the first of Canada's commercial partners in Africa, the first trade post outside the British Commonwealth, with a trade commissioner posted in Leopoldville in 1948,Brown, J. C. Gordon. 2000. ''Blazes along a diplomatic trail: a memoir of four posts in the Canadian foreign service'', Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, p. 158, 163, 165, . ranking it among Canada's top dozen trading partners; in the mid-1950s the Canadian company Aluminum Limited attempted to gain control of the construction of the Inga hydro-electric power project at Matadi on the Congo River, however they "anxiously preferred to remain discreet" to avoid "antagoniz ngBelgian business interests".

The Royal Bank of Canada partnered in 1957 with eight other international banks in furnishing a $40 million World Bank loan to the Belgian Congo for the building of roads. In their 1962 book ''Anatomy of Big Business'', Libbie and Frank Park traced a direct connection from the Royal Bank's president and vice-president's directorship of Sogemines Ltd., a Canadian investment and holding company and Belgian subsidiary, to shared directorship in the Belgian parent conglomerate, Société Générale de Belgique, which also owned the Congolese firm Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. The authors identified an extended network involving major Canadian corporations including Canadian Petrofina Ltd., Abitibi Power and Paper Company, Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Ltd., Noranda Mines Ltd., and Dominion Steel & Coal Corp. Ltd., concluding that " eryone is happy; everyone is scratching everyone else's back at a profit - and profits are extracted from the labor of Congo workers who up till recently have had nothing to say about the situation".

In July 1960, the newly appointed Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, made an official visit to Canada (Montreal and Ottawa), requesting Francophone technical assistance for his country,Spooner, Kevin A. 2009. "Just West of Neutral: Canadian "Objectivity" and Peacekeeping during the Congo Crisis, 1960–61", ''Canadian Journal of African Studies'', 43(2):303-336. however financial assistance was turned down by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.Granatstein, J.L. 1968. "Canada: Peacekeeper. A survey of Canada's participation in peacekeeping operations", in: ''Peacekeeping: International Challenge and Response'', oronto The Canadian Institute of International Affairs, p. 161. During the ensuing Congo Crisis, about 1,800 Canadians from 1960 to 1964 served among the 93,000 predominantly African peacekeepers with the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC), working chiefly as communications signallers and delivering via the Royal Canadian Air Force humanitarian food shipments and logistical support.Gaffen, Fred. 1987. ''In the Eye of the Storm: A history of Canadian peacekeeping'', Toronto: Deneau & Wayne, p. 217-239. The Canadian participation stemmed more from overwhelming public opinion, and not decisive action on the part of the Diefenbaker government, according to historians Norman Hillmer and Jack Granatstein.Hillmer, Norman; Granatstein, J.L. 1994. ''Empire to umpire: Canada and the world to the 1990s'', Toronto : Copp Clark Longman, p. 255-256. However, Diefenbaker reportedly refused to comply with numerous public calls for Canada to provide humanitarian relief to 230,000 Congolese famine victims in South Kasai in 1961 ostensibly because "surplus foodstuffs should be distributed to unemployed persons in Canada" as a first priority. Two Canadians died from non-conflict-related causes, and, out of the 33 Canadians injured in the conflict, twelve received "severe beatings" by the Congolese forces. Although Patrice Lumumba dismissed the first incidences of these beatings, on August 18, 1960, as "unimportant" and "blown out of all proportion" in order for the UN to "influence public opinion", he attributed them a day later to the Armée Nationale Congolaise's "excess of zeal". Historians have described these incidents as cases of mistaken identity under chaotic circumstances, in which Canadian personnel were confused by Congolese soldiers with Belgian paratroopers, or mercenaries working for the Katanga secession. Only a quarter of Canada's signallers extended their six-month tours of duty to a full year, and Canadian forces reportedly found the Congolese to be "illiterate, very volatile, superstitious and easily influenced", including an instance where a Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel successfully persuaded Kivu Province's Prime Minister to accept a relief contingent from Malaysia by explaining to him that the Malaysians were capable of diverting bullets in flight away from their intended path. A recent study concluded that while the Canadian government "demonstrated a greater willingness to accommodate the Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba than other Western nations" and publicly did not side with either faction, it " ivately ..favoured the more Western oriented residentKasavubu". Canada's troops earned the trust of Joseph Mobutu, the latter visiting Canada in 1964 as leader of the Congolese National Army, during which he acknowledged Canada's support in maintaining his country's territorial integrity.

Canada established formal diplomatic ties with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1965, with Ambassador J.C. Gordon Brown taking charge of the Canadian embassy in Léopoldville.

With funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Quebec firm Gauthier, Poulin et Thériault (later Groupe Poulin & Thériault) conducted an inventory of 5.2 million hectares of Zairian forest during 1974–1976. During the 1980s, Canada undertook a detailed inventory of Zaire's forestry resources with the aim of developing the sector, via the Service Permanent d'Inventaire et d'Aménagement Forestier (SPIAF).

In November 1996, the first deployment of Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), along with 354 Canadian Forces personnel, out of 1,500 originally committed, formed "Operation Assurance", with its mission to deliver humanitarian services to Rwandan refugees in eastern Zaire, as part of a Canada-led, United Nations-mandated African Great Lakes Multinational Force.Hennessy, Michael A. 2001. "Operation 'Assurance': Planning a multinational force for Rwanda/Zaïre", ''Canadian Military Journal'', Spring 2001, 11-20, http://www.journal.dnd.ca/vo2/no1/doc/11-20-eng.pdf (accessed March 9, 2011). Raymond Chrétien, a nephew of the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who was Canada's ambassador to the United States and previously in Zaire from 1978 to 1981, was appointed during November and December 1996, the UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Great Lakes Region; Chrétien's role was to help defuse the tension in the region, initiate a negotiation process for the repatriation of Rwandan and Burundian refugees in eastern Zaire, and to secure a ceasefire with the leader of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL), Mr. Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Assisted under Canadian Forces Operation LEGATION, Raymond Chrétien consulted with Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko and with the leaders in Rwanda, Burundi, and neighbouring countries.United Nations. Secretary-General. 1996. "Report of the Secretary-General on the Implementation of Resolution 1078 (1996)", http://www.un.org/Docs/s1996993.htm (accessed March 22, 2011). While Chrétien did not meet with Laurent Kabila despite requests from the latter, the Canadian Lieutenant-General Maurice Baril and leader of the multinational force did meet with Kabila in Goma in November 1996, discussing food airlifts for the Rwandan refugees in eastern Zaire. General Baril secured a promise from the AFDL to not fire on humanitarian relief aircraft in return for providing Kabila's forces with advance notice of these flights, however Baril's convoy of Joint Task Force 2 personnel was reportedly ambushed en route between Goma and Kigali, and had to be rescued by U.S. Apache and Tomahawk helicopters. Prompted in November 1996 by television images of the refugees, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien reported contacting world leaders to assemble an international military force of 15,000, including Europeans and Americans, under Canadian command, however Chrétien notes that the crisis resolved itself before a Security Council resolution had been obtained. Estimates of the number of Rwandan refugees in the eastern DRC varied widely, from France counting "700,000" to Germany's "500,000", Canada's "300,000 to 500,000", and the United States NGO, Human Rights Watch, assuming only a few tens of thousands. In mid-December 1996, both Raymond Chrétien and Maurice Baril recommended the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers, based on evidence of a mass repatriation of the Hutu refugees, and then-assistant deputy foreign minister Paul Heinbecker announced the Government of Canada's decision to end the mission on December 31. Despite these actions, according to the Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman, a half million Rwandans had in fact migrated further east into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) rather than repatriating. In June 2003, General Maurice Baril served as Special Representative to UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan to mediate with the DRC government in forming a new army,UN News Service. "Calm in Bunia, transitional government keys to situation in DR of Congo, Annan says", 3 June 2003, http://www.un.org/apps/news/storyAr.asp?NewsID=7294&Cr=DR&Cr1=Congo&Kw1=congo&Kw2=&Kw3=(accessed April 12, 2011). when DRC president Joseph Kabila signed a power-sharing agreement with rival factions.

The journalist and former Médecins sans Frontières (Canadian Branch) communications director during the 1996 Congo/Zaire crisis, Carole Jerome, stated in 2001 that:

Washington had absolutely no desire to go in and stop the carnage wrought by Kabila. Instead it prevailed upon the Canadians to lead this doomed mission, and they were willing dupes. Jean Chrétien had been moved by sights of killings on TV, and genuinely wanted to do something. Wading into this we had the prime minister's nephew and ambassador to the US, Raymond Chrétien, who was hopelessly unprepared. When he suggested the solution was setting up a hospital in Rwanda, where MSF had been running a hospital for years, one of our doctors moaned, 'Oh dear, the man does need some work'. Meanwhile, the only ones who actually did want to intervene seriously were the French, just as they had finally done themselves in Rwanda, with Operation ''Turquoise''.

According to Paul Heinbecker, who later became Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, the "Americans, pursuing their own obscure agenda in the Congo, offered much advice but little assistance, and the British, unwilling to play second fiddle to 'colonials' and supporting the Americans reflexively, were actively unhelpful ..Canada did not then have the military capacity itself to carry out a major combat operation half a world away". Other sources document copious evidence that the United States had direct involvement in supporting Laurent Kabila and the AFDL in overthrowing the Mobutu regime. Reflecting in 2008 on his work experiences in Zaire, Raymond Chrétien opined that "Mobutu who was a great African leader but living in a very corrupt environment, a very difficult environment; he was a skilful man at keeping his country together".

In Vancouver, in June 1997, Mbaka Kawaya, the chair of Congo's newly appointed Générale des carrières et des mines (Gécamines) led a Congolese delegation that met with Canadian mining companies active in the Congo, including Harambee Mining Corp., International Panorama Resource Corp., and Tenke Mining Corp. In 1998, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade co-sponsored, under the organisation of Joe Clark, a visit by the DRC Minister of Mines, Frederic Kibassa-Maliba, for meetings with mining companies at the PDAC's annual convention in Toronto. During his Canada mission, Minister Kibassa-Maliba was also scheduled to meet with Canadian NGOs at Montreal offices of the Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin, however, this meeting was reportedly canceled by Canada's Foreign Affairs department following protests made by dozens of representatives from a banned Congolese opposition party, the UDPS (Union for Democracy and Social Progress).

During 1997–1998, former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark was employed by the Vancouver, Canada-based First Quantum Minerals as a political adviser to the newly established Congolese president, Laurent-Désiré Kabila.Silcoff, Sean. 1998. "Out of Africa", ''Canadian Business'', Sep 25, 1998, 71(15):18.Drohan, Madelaine. 2004. "Tango in the Congo", ''Canadian Geographic'', Nov/Dec 2004, 124(6):86-98, http://www.madelainedrohan.com/CongoTango.doc (accessed February 15, 2011)Freeman, Alan. 2005. "The little fixer from Shawinigan?", ''The Globe and Mail'', Mar 5, 2005, pg. F.3 Clark also co-directed a 58-member election observers team from the Carter Center during the DRC's 2006 elections. From 1993 to the present, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has been on the board of directors of Barrick Gold Corporation, serving as Chairman of the company's International Advisory Board, during which time Barrick acquired gold mining concessions in the D.R. Congo in 1996,Anonymous. 1996. "American Barrick Steps In", ''Africa Energy & Mining '', N. 175, February 14, 1996. and relinquished them in 1998.Anonymous. 1998. "Barrick Steps Back", ''Africa Energy & Mining'', N. 228, May 13, 1998. According to Barrick's chairman, Peter Munk, Mulroney was recruited because " has great contacts. He knows every dictator in the world on a first name basis". A third Canadian ex-Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, held meetings with D.R. Congo politicians in Kinshasa during January 2005. Since 2008, former prime minister Paul Martin has been co-chair of the Governing Council of the Congo Basin Forest Fund, a multi-donor sustainable and community forestry initiative which was founded to protect the Congo Basin rain forests that are shared by the D.R. Congo and nine other central African nations.

Robert S. Stewart, a Canadian-Swiss dual citizen and graduate of the University of Manitoba

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