Scarcity and Control : The New Extraction and Canada's Mineral Resource Protection Network

In what follows I draw from a variegated set of texts to explore and explain Canada's new concerted effort to protect and promote Canadian extractives abroad. I integrate Immanuel Wallerstein's concept of “protection networks” with Michael Klare's recent writing on resource scarcity and my previous work on junior mining companies to illuminate the behavior of the Canadian state. This chapter, therefore, underscores previous calls for greater recognition of state governance in commodity chain analyses and makes the case for greater attention to states, commodity chains and global governance in the work around the new extraction in Latin America. In the first section below I recapitulate the concept of protection network in relation to the commodity chains literature, making the case that this concept helps address some of the deficiencies of the commodity chain analytic frame. In the second section I turn to discourses of resource scarcity and the proliferation of junior mining companies argue that scarcity-driven inefficiencies in the mining sector call for increased state intervention, of which the Canadian state is emblematic. In the third section I draw from a review of grey literature and journalistic accounts to reconstruct the landscape and chronology of Canadian state intervention in Canadian mining in Latin America. I delineate, in this section, in empirical detail, the features of the Canadian state's mineral protection network, demonstrating its novelty and its breadth. Finally, I explore the significance of Canada's mineral protection network as a feature of the new extraction and conclude the chapter by looking forward to new directions for related analysis