Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Canadian mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. This discussion, though it does lean towards keeping, has not sufficiently addressed the previous consensus to merge. In other words, it's not established that consensus has changed to favor keeping over merging, thus the discussion will not be closed as such. However, at the same time I'll also note that the previous consensus has not exactly been reaffirmed in this discussion, with a minority of editors favoring merging or deletion. Therefore, the question of whether or not to merge this article remains in the hands of the community. Swarm ^X 02:27, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo[edit]

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It has been a year since the last AfD for this article, which closed as a merge to Mining industry of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which as of today, has not happend. The article is still original research with no indication that this is a notable topic. While the article does have lots of sources, they are not about the concept of Canadian companies mining in the DRC, but about Canadian companies that happen to operate in the DRC. I have gone through some of the sections of the article to demonstrate this (shown below).

Lead, the lead is an editorial statement about why this article is important, but draws on information that from sources about topics unrelated to the DRC. Example, bullet point #2 is related to Canadian companies working in Mexico, bullet point #4 deals with Peru and domestic indiginous rights. Bullet point #5 deals with Canadian emissions laws and the tar sands.
Distinction
- Predominant Canadian corporate presence is sourced by looking up foreign companies that operate in the DRC on Datamonitor 360 (corporate listing), remaining information is sourced from corporate websites that have operations in the DRC, but there are no secondary sources indicating that Canadian dominance in DRC mining is a notable concept.
- Direct involvement by a former Canadian head of government, Joe Clark being on the board for a mining company that operates internationally is not shocking, Jean Chrétien is a "special advisor" to Ivanhoe Mines which operates in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, etc. Brian Mulroney is on Barrick Gold's board of directors, and they operate in Australia, Tanzania, etc...This is not a new concept, nor does it make the DRC unique.
Minerals, this is the section that actually could have been included in the Mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo article, a summary of the Canadian companies that are mining there. This section is made up largely of links to corporate results and SEDAR.
Cumulative Canadian mining assets, this section (charts) shows that Canadian companies invest more money in Madagasgar, the same amount in South Africa, and almost as much in Tanzania, as the do in the DRC. There is then a breakdown of the assets in the DRC.
Canadian & multilateral public investments
- CPP and QPP, this section is just a dump from the Canada Pension Plan and Quebec Pension Plan showing "Canadian and foreign companies that have been active in Congolese mining". No secondary source showing relevance, just charts showing that the CPP and QPP invest in mining companies, and some of those companies opearate in the DRC.
- Export Development Canada, this section states that EDC gave loans to some companies that operate in the DRC, but these loans were not for DRC projects, although one was for a project in Zambia, and is close to the DRC boarder. There is also a statement that in 2009 Kinross Gold received money for "general corporate purposes" (could be used anywhere), however Kinross divested its interest in Katanga in 2006, I didn't see any other instances of Kinross operating in the DRC, could just be missing something though.
World Bank, Canada contributes to the World Bank, Canadian firms were awarded 45 contracts by the World Bank, 5 were mining or energy related. I don't see how this shows distinction, 5 were mining or energy related, 40 weren't.

I still don't see this as a notable topic, more appropriate would be a section on the Mining in the DRC article that shows all international companies that operate in the DRC (such as the 6 Australian 3 South African that also operate). kelapstick^(bainuu) 23:30, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - there's some POV stuff, particularly in the lead, and the whole thing reads like an essay or research report, but there's a lot of info there. I don't see any particularly clear grounds for deleting this - parts of it could certainly be merged into other articles, and it needs trimming and rewriting, but deleting it is the wrong action. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:47, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:56, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:56, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep it is a notable topic in Congo and also in Canada (Toronto, believe it or not, is to mining companies what Chicago is to commodities and New York to banking). Fix the article, don't nix it. Vale of Glamorgan (talk) 05:07, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is there is no evidence that it is a notable topic, a newspaper article about Anvil Mining's operations in the DRC does not make Canadian mining in the DRC a notable topic, it makes the mining operation(s) a notable topic. The question I am asking is ""where are the third party, reliable sources, that address Canadian mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in detail?" Or "how does Canadian mining in the DRC meet the general notability guidelines?" This article has a lot of sources that talk about the companies themselves, which is not the same as talking about the concept of Canadian Mining in the DRC. There is nothing to fix, because there are no sources about the subject of the article itself, if you took out all the syntheses and original research, there would be nothing left.--kelapstick^(bainuu) 05:49, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well here is a 2005 report by Human Rights Watch alleging Canadian mining company Barrick Gold and other mining companies "of making mining agreements in 2002 with two eastern DRC militias that had control of the mines. Both militias were also in the midst of murdering hundreds of civilians. In return for the gold mines, the militias were given housing and trucks, among other appeasements. Incredibly, as highlighted by independent journalist and Congo-expert Keith Harmon Snow, Barrick’s current and past advisors and directors include former US president George H.W. Bush, former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney, Vernon Jordan, a close friend to Bill Clinton, and one-time Tennessee senator Howard Baker. Snow says Barrick and one its partners, Anglo-Ashanti, even sent in lawyers to help represent leaders of the militias after some were apprehended by the DRC government." (according to a summary in this article). I'd say that this report provides at least one source about the subject of the article. Vale of Glamorgan (talk) 06:02, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Excellent find, however The Curse of Gold is actually about violence associated with gold mining in the DRC in general, not about Canadian mining in the DRC.

The Wordpress page that is a reprint of an article from towardfreedom.com...not sure where that stands in the RS department.--kelapstick^(bainuu) 06:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I intended using the quotation from Wordpress page as a quick way to provide summary of the HRW report, not as a source in itself. Vale of Glamorgan (talk) 04:19, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Wordpress quote does not summarize the HRW article. The HRW article does not talk about Canadaian mining. HRW focuses on AngoGold Ashanti, and their dealings with "bad guys". Anglo is not a Canadian company. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 09:51, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. We should distinguish editing criticism from inclusion criteria, so I'll limit to the latter for this AfD.

On the General notability guideline, this issue was addressed by Victor Falk on 01:35 13 Feb 2011 during the original AfD discussion: "there's been easily sufficient news coverage to merit an article per wp:n. Article as of now may need wp:cleanup, which AfD is not". Victor Falk's link to Google News no longer executes as intended, however a search for: (congo "canadian mining") returns a Google page stating today that "About 243 results" were retrieved from the Google News Archives. Scrolling through the citations, it turns out the actual count is closer to 100.

Academic research, including peer-reviewed, on DR Congo mining specifically or in part addressing Canadian companies includes:

Lydall, M.I.; Auchterlonie, D.A. 2011. "The Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia: a growing global 'hotspot'for copper-cobalt mineral investment and exploitation", 6th Southern Africa Base Metals Conference 2011, The Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, http://www.saimm.co.za/Conferences/BM2011/025-Auchterlonie.pdf (Includes a tally of 11 foreign mining firms in southern DRC: five are Canadian, two each from S.Africa and Australia, one each from Kazakhstan and Switzerland.)
Smith, James H. 2011. "Tantalus in the Digital Age: Coltan ore, temporal dispossession, and 'movement' in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo", American Ethnologist, 38(1):17-35. (Excerpt: "[F]oreign gold-mining companies, like the Canadian gold company Banro, exercise a great deal of power in the Eastern Congo, and some Congolese blame these companies (Banro, specifically) ... ")

Abadie, Delphine. 2011. "Canada and the geopolitics of mining interests: a case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo", Review of African Political Economy 38(128):289—302. (Excerpt: "[M]ining operators – and Canadian projects in Congo in particular – are often managed from tax havens and other offshore jurisdictions. This means that their activities are not contributing substantially to the budget of any state.")

Garrett, Nicholas; Lintzer, Marie. 2010. "Can Katanga's mining sector drive growth and development in the DRC?", Journal of Eastern African Studies, 4(3), 400-424. (Includes estimates of Canadian companies' contribution to Congolese economy)

Mazalto, Marie. 2009. "Chapter 5. Governance, Human Rights and Mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo", in: Mining in Africa: Regulation and Development, Bonnie Campbell, ed., Pluto Press.

Mazalto, Marie. 2009. "Environmental Liability in the Mining Sector: Prospects for Sustainable Development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo", in: J.P. Richards, ed., Mining, Society and a Sustainable World, Berlin: Springer, p. 289-316.

Deneault, A., Abadie, D., and Sacher, W., 2008. Noir Canada: pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique, Montreal, QC: Ecosociété. (includes sections covering First Quantum, Anvil Mining, AMFI in Congo)

Journalism includes:

Abadie, Delphine. 2010. "Le Canada en République Démocratique du Congo : « ô mes amis, il n’y a nul ami... »", Alternatives International Journal, 2 août 2010.

Engler, Yves. 2010. "Blood on Our Hands", Canadian Dimension, May/Jun2010, 44(3):42-43. (Quotes Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende: Canadian officials "have a problem with what's happened with a Canadian company" ... "The Canadian government wants to use the Paris Club [of debtor nations] in order to resolve a particular problem. This is unacceptable.")

Lasker, John. 2009. "Digging for Gold, Mining Corruption. One of Africa's Poorest and Most Embattled Countries is Prey to Canadian Mining Companies Searching for the Last Great Gold mine", Canadian Dimension, Nov/Dec2009, 43(6):34-47. (Banro Corporation's gold mining in DRC).

Engler, Yves. 2009. The black book of Canadian foreign policy, Black Point, N.S.: Fernwood. (p. 179-191 surveys Canada - D.R. Congo relations from 1891-2009 including mining activities).

Heaps, Toby A.A. 2006. "Canadian Companies in the Congo and the OECD Guidelines", Corporate Knights Magazine, Issue 16.

Patterson, Kelly. 2006. "Congo wants Canadian tried for war crimes. Executive, employees of mining firm 'facilitated' civilian deaths, judge says", The Ottawa Citizen, October 17, 2006, p. A.5.

Drohan, Madelaine. 2004. "Tango in the Congo" ("How Canadian mining companies are doing business in one of the most corrupt and dangerous countries in Africa"), Canadian Geographic, Nov/Dec 2004, 124(6):86-98.

Broughton, Gianne. 2004. "Making life real at the edge of the war: while mining companies, including some from Canada, continue to perpetuate the violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, another force rises to counter the effects ... people power", Briarpatch. 33.6 (July-September 2004), p3.

Testimony before Canadian parliamentary hearings includes:

Tougas, Denis. "Evidence", Government of Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, November 24, 2009, 0920,

Most of the foregoing sources have either been cited in the article under discussion, or in Canada–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations.

On the uniqueness of Canada's involvement, there are the facts listed in the article's leader, which has been restored to its previous form: that three Canadian firms have been responsible for two-thirds of Congolese copper and cobalt production during the last decade; that a Canadian lawyer directed Gecamines, the Congo's mining parastatal from 2005 to 2009; that former Canadian prime minister Joe Clark was employed by Canadian-incorporated company First Quantum Minerals as a presidential advisor to the former Congolese president Laurent Kabila in 1997-1998; that First Quantum was the DRC's largest taxpayer in 2009, generating between an eighth and a quarter of the country's total tax revenues. Going further back in time, the former Canadian diplomat Robert Stewart, who, in 1998, chaired Canadian-incorporated America Mineral Fields and plotted to overthrow the government of Laurent Kabila; to the Second World War, the Canadian-government-owned Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited refined 3,700 tons of Congolese uranium used by the Manhattan Project for the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki (sources: Canada – Democratic Republic of the Congo relations#History).

On this article's Talk page, in July 2011, the article was assessed as "within the scope of WikiProject Canada, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Canada on Wikipedia" and was rated "C-Class on the project's quality scale" and "Low-importance on the project's importance scale". The article was also deemed to be "within the scope of WikiProject Mining" and "within the scope of WikiProject Africa" and "supported by WikiProject Democratic Republic of the Congo". However, no quality or importance assessments have been made to date.

A parallel article on Canadian Mining in Latin America and the Caribbean was created in February 2012. It adopts a similar structure to Canadian Mining in the DR Congo. Note too that an article on Copper mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was created in January 2012.

Concerning the comment by kelapstick, "Canadian companies that happen to operate in the DRC", it can be noted that for many Canadian-registered companies in the article, the DRC is or was the sole field of operation, including two of the largest players, Anvil Mining and Katanga Mining.

There are really three concepts embedded in this article, mining, the DR Congo and Canada. Accordingly, summaries of the content now appear in both Mining industry of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Canada–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations, with cross-references to the present article for the complete story and, in some instances, the sources. I support kelapstick's argument that material added to the lead in January 2012 is too broad for this article and more appropriate for a parent, but at present putative, "Canadian mining beyond Canadian borders" article, and accordingly have removed it, and restored the Distinction section back into the lead.

IVX8O8XVI (talk) 19:55, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge. That was the result of the last AfD, and the points raised there still stand. Unfortunately the article's problem is basically one of tldr; so we had a discussion and the article creator posted some more tldr stuff on the talkpage; the result was "merge" but they didn't agree and posted more tldr stuff; nobody else had the patience to deal with the reams of text and the original creator certainly had no intention of abiding by the earlier consensus so now we get another AfD and, surprisingly enough, the creator now adds lengthy unreadable tangential stuff on this page too. Just get rid of it already. bobrayner (talk) 21:36, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep There seem to be sufficient sources for an independent article. The topic is really too broad to be handled in a single article at the necessary depth, because of the political involvement. I assume the tldr comment was about the discussion, not the sources or the article. DGG ( talk ) 03:32, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with this, as written, is that it's not an encyclopedia article. It's a piece of public advocacy journalism, sourced by digging through corporate reports and other WP:PRIMARYSOURCES, which cites no reliable secondary sources to demonstrate that "Canadian mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo" is a notable concept in its own right — and by the creator's own admission in the first debate, the purpose wasn't to create an encyclopedia article, but a public advocacy piece specifically meant to influence a political debate about resource divestment. Wikipedia has a neutral point of view policy, so it's not our role to advocate for a political issue one way or the other. It's worthwhile content, but Wikipedia is not the correct place for it. Advocacy website, by all means. Blog, sure. But it doesn't belong here. Delete. Bearcat (talk) 06:05, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Unfounded assertions, and nebulous cloudgazing robo-shamanism aside (from last time: "...the idea that "Canadian mining companies operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo" constitute a distinct class of thing...", no arguments to delete have been presented. We are asked for no more than to WANT TO BELIEVE that what is important is the EXISTENCE of mining companies, not the type and qualities of their activities. This is patently absurd. The fact that merge IS deletion, for anything larger than a stub is always overlooked; please consider the quantity of material. Anarchangel (talk) 21:13, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing "nebulous cloudgazing roboshamanism" about it. The fact that an article topic has to constitute a distinct and encyclopedic thing which has already been recognized as a distinct and encyclopedic thing by reliable sources, and cannot be based on original research which collates primary sources with the goal of inventing a new encyclopedia topic, is right at the very core of how Wikipedia defines what does or doesn't belong here in the first place. Bearcat (talk) 22:53, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, my rather verbose nomination had the deletion rationale:

The topic does not pass the general notability guidelines, because none of the sources talk about Canadian Minining in the DRC as a topic, they talk about instances of Canadian mining companies that operate in the DRC, which is not the same thing.
Having lots of sources is not a valid reason to keep an article
The article uses original research, syntheses, and personal opinion to bring the information togeher to present it as though it were a notable topic.

My nomination statement was not clear enough, and maybe didn't expand on the correct points. In summary, an article about Anvil Mining's operations in the DRC does not make Canadian Mining in the DRC meet the inclusion criteria for Wikipedia. Ten articles about ten Canadian companies' operations in the DRC does not make Canadian Mining in the DRC meet the inclusion criteria for Wikipedia. An article/book written about the concept of Canadian mining companies operating in the DRC does.--kelapstick^(bainuu) 23:26, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.