The issue of Jan. 27 carried an advertisement that the Argentine government is planning to carry out a multi-parameter airborne survey over a large mineral area there.
What upsets me is an item in the fine print that states that this project will be funded in part by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which, in turn, is funded by Canadian taxpayers. With the federal government already staggering under a crippling, interest-bearing debt that is still growing, I cannot see why we should be financing such projects in Argentina, which is not a poor country.
It is my understanding that CIDA’s expenditures are gifts, with no payback — not even an interest — should such tests result in a find similar in scale to Bre-X’s Busang discovery in Indonesia.
With this country’s unemployment rate nudging a cruel 10% (higher among our aboriginal people), any government money spent in the search for new mines should be done here in our own vast north, the surface of which remains little more than scratched.
M.R. (Mort) Brown
Toronto, Ont.
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