Jubilee Australia's report 'Growing Bougainville's Future: Choices for an island and its people' examines the choice facing the people of Bougainville and asks the question of ‘to mine or not to mine.’ MiningWatch Canada staff member Catherine Coumans contributed the chapter, "Mining and development: Is “good governance” really the cure?"

On May 16, 2018, MiningWatch Canada and OECD Watch issued a media release to draw attention to an attempt by the Government of Canada to cover up its mishandling of a complaint through Canada’s National Contact Point (NCP) for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises . The Request for Review in question, titled “ Complaint against the Sakto Group, Ottawa” was filed with Canada’s NCP in January 2016 by the not-for-profit Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF) of Switzerland. The complaint alleges that the Sakto Group, with corporations headquartered in Ottawa, breached disclosure requirements of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, a guide to responsible business conduct that is binding on Canada and other members of the OECD.

Bill C-69 brings both promise and disappointment. Overall, however, it does not fulfil the government’s promise of restoring public confidence, and therefore also cannot fulfil the promise of facilitating good development projects. In some respects, it represents a failure of ambition, where a stronger commitment and stronger leadership are required to meet the challenges of the 21st century. In other respects, it is just a matter of design flaws and limitations of implementation. At this juncture, it may be too late to address the bigger structural problems, but Parliament has the opportunity to fix many of the Bill’s deficiencies.

As part of the OECD Peer Review of the Canadian National Contact Point on the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, MiningWatch was asked to submit a general questionnaire, as well as to participate in a review of the Porgera Specific Instance (2011), in which we were a notifier. This questionnaire answers general questions. Under section B. (Specific Instances) we discuss the Porgera case in more detail. Finally, Appendix 1 provides further detail regarding specific concerns related to the Canadian NCPs handling of ten Specific Instance cases.

This is MiningWatch Canada’s submission in response to the federal government’s Discussion Paper on its reviews of environmental and regulatory processes, including the review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012, the National Energy Board Act, the Fisheries Act , and the Navigation Protection Act. Our focus here is on the environmental assessment portion of the Discussion Paper; we refer readers to our submissions to the Parliamentary reviews of the Fisheries Act and the Navigation Protection Act for our comments on those reviews.

This is a report of MiningWatch Canada's human rights field assessment of Acacia Mining/Barrick Gold's North Mara mine in northwest Tanzania, conducted by staff member Catherine Coumans. This was the fourth consecutive year Coumans had conducted human rights field assessments around the mine interviewing over a 100 victims and family members of victims of excess use of force, including sexual violence, by mine security and police guarding the mine.

This document was prepared to help members of the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights prepare for their May 23-June 1 mission to Canada . It proposes discussion in six areas: Access to remedy (non-judicial) – Issues related to access to non-judicial remedy as it pertains to Canada’s mining sector’s activities overseas, in particular in regard to: inadequacies of state-based non-judicial mechanisms; flawed use of Operational-Level Grievance Mechanisms. Access to remedy (judicial) – Issues related to access to legal remedy as it pertains to Canada’s mining sector’s

Submission to the Expert Panel Reviewing Environmental Assessment Processes Based on our work, we would like to focus on four areas within the collective recommendations of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Caucus, the Multi-Interest Advisory Committee (MIAC), and the EA Reform Summit. The need to extend assessment beyond biophysical impacts to look at sustainability more inclusively and holistically, including economic, social, and cultural aspects that are currently excluded – or applied as decision-making criteria without having been subject to review and public scrutiny; this has