Amid talk of a green technology mining boom, Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson reports ‘record’ mining investment in the province

Julia-Simone Rutgers, The Narwhal

Over the past four years, the Manitoba government has been seeking a resurgence in its century-old mining industry. 

While progress has been slow — owing in part to financial downturns in the pandemic — there are signs mining in Manitoba is on the cusp of something of a boom. 

(Ottawa) The Canadian government has set its sights on a Free Trade Agreement with Ecuador, but communities already feeling the impacts of Canadian mining investment warn that a FTA would exacerbate violence against environment and Indigenous defenders who are organized in their opposition to Canadian projects. 

In light of the start of negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Canada, as announced by President Guillermo Lasso, as territorial social organizations, environmentalists, and research centres, we warn about the serious effects that this agreement would have on human and collective rights and the rights of nature, which are the pillars of the Ecuadorian Constitution. 
 

We, 77 groups from six countries, stand together against the abusive practices of one of the world's major global mining corporations: OceanaGold. We come together from the six countries where OceanaGold has offices or has current or recent mining operations or explorations: Australia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand, the Philippines, the United States, and El Salvador. OceanaGold is headquartered in Brisbane, Australia; is traded on the Toronto stock exchange; and is incorporated in British Columbia, Canada.

The caribou are life. The existence of the “Caribou Inuit” of the Eastern Arctic is inextricable from that of the great barren-ground caribou herds, yet just as Inuit have had to fight Canada’s imposed genocidal policies, they have had to fight to protect the caribou their lives depend on. This unique and important book combines Inuk lead author Joan Scottie’s personal recollections and reflections with documentation and analysis from qablunaat scholar co-authors Jack Hicks and Warren Bernauer to create a perspective that is at once deeply personal but also interlaced with scholarly documentation, bringing new light on Inuit resistance to colonial imposition, whether directly from the Canadian government or from transnational mining corporations.

We appreciate that you express concern regarding the information we have provided you in our letter of January 27, 2023, about the forced evictions ongoing in Komarera village. We have posted your February 14, 2023 response on our site.

We are considering your request that we:

particularize the testimonies you refer to, provide us with the footage of the scenes you describe, and that you explain to us in detail:
a) your methodology for obtaining the information said to support your allegations; b) the due diligence applied in corroborating and verifying your information; and c) how you have independently verified the accounts in your letter and report.

Join the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA) and MiningWatch Canada for the presentation of the report “Lithium mining in Mexico: Public interest or transnational extractivism?” (“Explotación del litio en México: Interés público o extractivismo transnacional?") – an important update to a 2021 report analyzing the socio-environmental implications of expanding mining in Mexico in the name of the capitalist energy transition.

Harm caused or contributed to by Canadian mining companies, their subsidiaries and contractors overseas is widespread globally and persistent. It includes environmental degradation that will persist for hundreds of years, a wide range of human rights harms, abuses of Indigenous rights, as well as negative economic and financial impacts at local and national levels. Together, these impacts have serious and long-term repercussions on local and national development.

In Mexico, the government promotes the exploitation of lithium as part of an effort to strengthen national sovereignty, justifying mining by designating lithium extraction as being in the public interest. But what is being promoted as positive and necessary for the country's development is in fact a project strongly tied to private capital – one that poses high risks to the public treasury, while being based on the dispossession, destruction and militarization of the territories where this mineral is located.

(Sept-Îles, Québec, Montréal) Without questioning the importance of the Bloom Lake mine for Fermont city and the Innu communities, eleven local and national organizations as well as three persons from Mani-Utenam and Moisie are calling on federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault not to authorize the destruction of lakes to store tailings and waste rock in Fermont, as proposed by Quebec Iron Ore (QIO).