Another statement by a Member of Parliament in Canada on Talisman Energy’s complicity in the oil-driven destruction of southern Sudan. This follows a similarly critical statement by another Member of Parliament last week (Irwin Cotler, Liberal Party).
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Statement to Parliament by Mr. Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon-Wanuskewin, Canadian Alliance Party), February 22, 2001:
“Mr. Speaker, the Canadian government is being complicit with the Government of Sudan in the perpetration of human rights abuses.
The Government of Sudan has inflicted unrelenting misery on the people of Sudan. It bombs schools, hospitals and churches. It denies food aid to war affected populations. It incites slave raids.
This brutal regime is financing its genocidal war by partnering with a Canadian oil company, Talisman Energy. Some of the profits from that joint venture are supporting that Sudan government’s genocide.
The Liberal government acknowledged this to be true as a result of the Harker report released by the government one year ago, but it took no action.
One year later, it is clear that the government’s policy of constructive engagement has failed. Last month even Lloyd Axworthy acknowledged on CBC Radio that Talisman ‘has not
lived up to its obligations at all’ and called the company’s behaviour
‘deplorable.’
It is time the Canadian government put an end to any Canadian commercial complicity in Sudan’s genocidal war.”
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The issue of Talisman Energy in Sudan will be very much before Parliament in Ottawa next week at hearings to be held by the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Group. The title of the session is “Human Rights in Sudan: One year after the Harker Report.”