A substantial debt crisis in the 1980s caused great economic instability in Latin America when debts owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) exceeded what countries could repay (Gordon and Webber 2008:66). The IMF and WB used the dire circumstances in Latin America to entice governments to undergo neoliberal structural adjustment to their economic policies, removing trade barriers with the Global North (ibid.). Alongside the removal of trade barriers, Canada also became involved in free trade agreements with Mexico and the United States with the ratification of …show more content…
According to the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States, mining generates more toxic waste than any other economic sector (Urkidi and Walter 2011: 683). Many of mines operated by Canadian corporations are gold mines, which employ the usage of cyanide filtering to extract the most resources, albeit at the price of a higher environmental impact (ibid.). A case study of the environmental impact of a gold mine located in Guyana will be used to exemplify the type of impact that these mining practices can