This submission on Ontario Bill 71, the proposed Building More Mines Act, observes that the government has brought forward a proposal that has not been broadly consulted and discussed, if it has been discussed at all other than with the mining industry. As a result, the proposed amendments to the Mining Act are unlikely to meet their stated purposes.

Corporate accountability experts sent a 30-page submission to the UN Human Rights Council ahead of its April 2023 Universal Periodic Review of Canada, denouncing Canada for its continued diplomatic support of mining companies over the safety of human rights and environment defenders (HRDs). 

MiningWatch Canada submits our response to the Canadian government, as part of a consultation with civil society on a potential Free Trade Agreement with Ecuador. We are concerned about a lack of transparency in this process for our partners in Ecuador, who were unaware or informed about the consultation process.

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.

This report looks at three examples of the application of the NPRI in the mining sector: the 2013 Obed Mountain coal mine spill in Alberta, the 2014 Mount Polley mine spill in British Columbia, and the Key Lake uranium mine and mill in Saskatchewan. These three cases show both some of the utility of the NPRI and some of its limitations in practical applications to support public interest research, policy development, and regulation.

Globalized industrial resource extraction is unsustainable from an environmental and social perspective, and Indigenous peoples are often on the front lines of alerting humanity to the resulting harms. Community members and their allies become environment and human rights defenders (HRDs) when they publicly allege harms on the part of state or company actors. As extraction intensifies around the world, so has the criminalization, threats, attacks, and even killings of HRDs. International bodies now regularly refer to this situation as a global crisis.

MiningWatch Canada has submitted comments on the draft federal environmental assessment conditions for the Marathon Palladium Project, where we express deep concern that the project is advancing in spite of the projected negative environmental effects and argue that a much more comprehensive and prescriptive set of conditions is required.

This report presents findings from research undertaken by MiningWatch Canada in North Mara, Tanzania, in September 2022. The issues addressed in this report have all occurred since Barrick’s September 2019 takeover of mine ownership and under Barrick’s CEO Mark Bristow. Findings are based on information provided by, among others, elected officials, community leaders, victims of violence by police who receive direct financial and other benefits from the mine (mine police), and family members of those who have perished as a result of excess use of force by mine police, as well as information provided by victims of violent and inequitable forced evictions, the legality of which is questionable.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson released a discussion paper on Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy at the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention earlier this year. This is a response to that document.