are Canadian diamonds really Canadian?

 I found a recent negative article in USA Today http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2706_132/ai_114740983 about the supply of diamonds that claims among other things that De Beers [...] can fly in a diamond from Africa, and, within a day, legally arrange for it to be given papers identifying it as Canadian. This makes me wonder if people who buy Canadian diamonds as a guarrantee do be conflict free are in fact being tricked. Do you believe the author is exaggerating, or there is some grain of truth in what he is saying? It seems Canadian mining is really betting of the validity of Canadian certification, and would be hurt if the certificate looses its trustworthiness.

 

 

this particular author's obsessive paranoia about de beers is fairly well established. there is some truth to what she has in that article (and the book it's based on), but it's impossible to separate fact from fiction. the stuff she writes is riddled with sloppy research and inaccuracies, some of them downright laughable. the tales about diamonds "tumbling out of the rock" are just that. diamonds simply don't occur that way in kimberlite. then she talks about "seeing" hundreds of diamonds by looking down at a stream bed. i know exploration geologists who would laugh out loud at that idea. what she saw was probably nothing but quartz pebbles. separating rough diamonds from the other minerals in an alluvial deposit is not something any competent geologist would ever attempt on sight alone. and her figures on the supposed ore grades around the world are wildly off the mark.

 

as for canadian certification, the canadian government takes it very seriously. i cannot imagine them letting de beers (or anyone else) circumvent it in such a fashion. the author would of course accuse the government of complicity with de beers, but there's nothing to back up such an idea. de beers in fact has had a very rough time of it in canada recently. they're about to open a diamond mine but getting there has required years of battles with local and federal regulators--not exactly a tale of complicity.