Community and environmental groups have prepared an important report on the impacts of mining exploration activities by Nouveau Monde Graphite (NMG) in Matawinie. Following an independent community environmental monitoring campaign, the report identifies numerous cases of heavy metal concentrations in watercourses that exceed environmental protection criteria, likely attributable to exploration activities.

Our annual report provides some key impact stories from MiningWatch's work in 2024, with additional information about our financial position in 2024.

This year marked a milestone for MiningWatch. Celebrating our 25th anniversary provided an important opportunity for reflecting on the reasons MiningWatch formed when we first opened our doors in 1999, the struggles we’ve supported, the relationships we’ve built along the way, and the immense challenges that lie ahead. 

We find the Act as a whole to represent a disturbingly unaccountable and anti-democratic initiative, in that many of its provisions either bypass, undo, or override established processes, reserving decision-making authority to Ministers or Cabinet and removing those decisions from the purview of the Legislature or any other deliberative and publicly-accountable body or process.

The global steel, iron and metallurgical coal industry is emission intensive: the Canadian steel industry contributes to 2 percent of national emissions. Many emission-intensive Canadian steel mills either do not have plans in place, or are experiencing delays and a lack of clarity about the path to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050  – which is both a government and Canadian Steel Producers Association (CSPA) target.

Between 2022 and 2024, Indigenous Kuria from villages surrounding North Mara Gold Mine in Tanzania filed cases in Canada against Barrick Gold Corporation for alleged human rights abuses in and around the North Mara mine. MiningWatch Canada attended the hearings in Toronto and has prepared this report where we: 

MiningWatch Canada makes a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change, to inform the rapporteur’s upcoming report on “Human Rights in the Life Cycle of Renewable Energy and Critical Minerals.” 

This submission highlights several examples of human rights violations linked to mining for critical minerals, from initial claims staking to exploration, exploitation, and recycling. While our focus is on mining in Canada and the activities of Canadian mining companies abroad, these violations are common globally. 

Submission to the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights, to inform the Rapporteur’s 2025 thematic report to the UN Human Rights Council.

The role of mercenaries, mercenary-related actors and private military and/or security companies (PMSCs) in the exploitation of natural resources.

Submission to the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries to inform the Working Group's report to be presented to the 60th Session of the Human Rights Council in September 2025.

This submission updates and expands on MiningWatch Canada’s 2019 submission to the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries with a focus on: 

On May 28, Québec’s Minister of Natural Resources and Forests, Maïté Blanchette Vézina, tabled Bill 63, an Act to amend the Mining Act and other provisions. The Coalition Québec meilleure mine (QMM) carried out an exhaustive analysis of the bill. In this brief, we present our general comments and proposed amendments. A detailed article-by-article analysis of the bill is available in the French version of this brief, originally published in September 2024 and available online.  

MiningWatch Canada launched as a pan-Canadian initiative on April 1, 1999, on the heels of a decade that saw an unprecedented global expansion of mining brought about by economic globalization. Indigenous, environmental, social justice, and labour organizations came together with different backgrounds and experiences to respond to threats posed by irresponsible mining practices in Canada and around the world.

Experts from the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) say First Quantum’s Cobre Panama tailings dam is at very serious and imminent risk of failure due to internal erosion and a lack of proper monitoring. ELAW's report analyzes the Ninth Monitoring Report, presented by Minera Panama, a subsidiary of First Quantum Minerals that operates the Cobre Panama mine, in September 2024, together with other documents that were provided by the Ministry of Environment to ELAW experts who visited Panama in November 2024. 

For over a decade, MiningWatch Canada and the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA) have advocated for an effective and independent ombudsperson with the powers to compel documents and witness testimony, in an effort to hold Canadian companies accountable for abuse at their operations overseas. 

This year, MiningWatch gathered information on alleged violence against Kuria villagers in 2023 and 2024 carried out by police assigned to the mine. We received information on 28 cases and conducted interviews with alleged victims and family members of those who have been killed. The 28 cases include villagers who have been shot and killed, shot and survived, beaten to death, arrested and tortured, and maimed in a life-altering way through being hit by a teargas canister.

Canada and Ecuador are in their fourth round of negotiations towards a free trade agreement set to dramatically expand Canadian mining investment in the South American country.

MiningWatch Canada and the Coalition Québec Meilleure Mine hereby submit their joint comments on the Government of Canada's Emergency Order to Protect Boreal Caribou Habitat in Quebec (hereinafter, the "Federal Order") as part of the consultation process announced on June 19, 2024 and ending today.

To accompany a meeting with UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, we provide six case studies spanning 17 years that demonstrate Canada's failures to respect human rights when it comes to mining. The first two case studies precede Canada’s adoption in 2016 of Voices at Risk: Canada’s Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders (Voices at Risk). Events outlined in the four subsequent case studies take place after the adoption of Voices at Risk.

Our annual report provides some key highlights from MiningWatch's work in 2023, with additional information about our financial position in 2023.

International Campaigns: Holding government and industry accountable for mining abuses abroad 

Panamanian organizations released a report documenting the rights violations and criminalization of activists during last year’s large-scale protests over First Quantum Minerals’ copper mine, Cobre Panamá.

The Shuar Arutam People (PSHA) filed a complaint against Solaris Resources Inc. (TSX: SLS) before the British Columbia Securities Commission over its failure to continuously disclose material information to shareholders regarding its Warintza mining project which overlaps PSHA’s titled territory. In spite of PSHA's explicit and continuous rejection of the Warintza project, Vancouver-based Solaris has kept moving forward with its mining plans in the Amazon, one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet.

In Quebec, the media often singles out the mining industry for being a repeat offender. This reputation stems from the bad practices of certain mine developers who have abandoned contaminated mine sites and left Quebec residents on the hook for billions of dollars for restoration, turned rivers red for dozens of kilometres, or have used lakes as dumping grounds for the tailings from iron ore processing plants.

Mine waste safety expert Dr. Steven Emerman released findings of his independent review of Barrick Gold’s Environmental and Social Impact Assessment for the Naranjo Tailings Storage Facility (TSF), warning that the Canadian mining giant is failing to adequately disclose the environmental and social risks posed by its planned expansion at the Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic.

Lighting summary:

Brief prepared for the country visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, Pedro Arrojo-Agudo.

Since 1999, MiningWatch has provided technical expertise and advocacy support to hundreds of communities across the globe as they assert their rights to safe drinking water and sanitation in the face of imminent and past harm by industrial mining.

MiningWatch Canada submitted a brief to the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, ahead of Professor Tomoya Obokata's country visit to Canada.

In May 2023, a delegation of 13 representatives from social and environmental justice organisations from eight countries in the Americas and Europe visited Colombia to share experiences of struggles against the global investment protection regime. The mission also went to learn firsthand about the peoples and ecosystems being threatened by corporate lawsuits, as well as the environmental, social and cultural harms that transnational investments have already caused, particularly in the departments of La Guajira and Santander.

This is MiningWatch Canada's submission to the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office, commenting on the draft final assessment report for Osisko Development Corporation (ODV)’s Cariboo Gold Project in Wells, British Columbia.

In June 2023, the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP) submitted a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of the family of Mariano Abarca. Mr. Abarca was a beloved community leader and human rights defender who was murdered with impunity on November 27, 2009, in Chiapas, Mexico. Mr. Abarca was killed for defending community rights in relation to the “Payback” mining project, owned by Canadian company Blackfire Exploration Ltd. (“Blackfire”). The complaint makes the case for Canada’s legal accountability for human rights abuse linked to its extractive industry overseas. 

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.

Covid-19 has created deeper inequalities and increased poverty while richer households and nations have begun to recover; the world’s poor and working class continue to absorb its impacts.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlights the relationship between the failures and contradictions of capitalism and the global destruction of nature and deepening socio-economic inequalities. The manner in which Covid-19 continues to unfold reflects the rhythm of existing patterns of exploitation, placing at the centre of its destructive path the world’s already vulnerable people.

This report explores, through research and a series of first-hand accounts, how extractive industries have sought to benefit from the Covid-19 pandemic, advancing mining agendas and shrinking civic space. Key themes are presented throughout case studies in Turkey, Northern Ireland, and Spain. This report was developed by the Europe Coordinating Committee of the Coalition Against the Mining Pandemic.

This report analyzes the mining industry’s operations in North America over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic to date, with a particular focus on the Canadian context. Drawing from an analysis of over fifty news articles, and academic literature and phone interviews, it highlights the social and environmental impacts of these operations on local communities and seeks to bring to light regulatory changes introduced under the cover of the pandemic.

This report was developed by the Coalition Against the Mining Pandemic - Asia-Pacific. The report discusses the nexus of the COVID-19 pandemic and the mining industry in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea, showing how the mining industry and governments in the region have reaped benefits from the pandemic. It also explores how mining-affected communities respond to the social and ecological crisis that they experience.

This is a revised version of "Safety First", Published jointly by Earthworks (USA) and MiningWatch Canada, it updates the guidelines for safety, respect for affected communities, and corporate accountability that must be incorporated into any tailings standards or regulations.

This report was developed by the Coalition against the Mining Pandemic – Latin America. It unmasks the unbridled advance of mining during the pandemic, for which reason communities and peoples in Latin America could not let their guard down even while taking measures to protect themselves from COVID-19.

In this report, Ecovision’s Stephen Hazell challenges British Columbia premier John Horgan’s claim that the province’s 2019 Environmental Assessment Act (BCEAA) is “world-leading”. “Not Yet a World Leader: Environmental Reviews of Metal Mines in British Columbia” finds that B.C actually lags other key jurisdictions by failing to assess some proposed metal mines that may have significant adverse effects.  

In its Andean salt flats, Chile has one of the largest proven reserves of lithium in brines and is a leading exporter of both lithium and copper -- two minerals identified as "critical" for the energy transition. But "green extractivism" has caused conflict in Indigenous and rural territories in Chile, threatening communities and environmental defenders who are currently facing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as climate change that the electric vehicle (EV) market promises to solve. This brief report seeks to explain the responsibility of Canadian investments in the emergence of new socio-environmental conflicts in Chile’s salt flats, in an effort to contribute to the national and international debate on possible futures with climate justice as a cornerstone in the development of policies that go beyond a corporate energy transition towards a real and socio-ecological transformation.

Full report: The global mining industry, often supported by host governments, is positioning mining as a “green solution” to the climate crisis. This “green mining boom” is rapidly expanding into culturally and ecologically sensitive areas, increasingly affecting Indigenous and human rights, community livelihoods and the environment. Communities, academics, and activists say that an energy transition that heavily depends on mining new materials without considering materials and energy for what, for whom, and at what socio-environmental costs will only reinforce injustices and lack of sustainability that have deepened the climate crisis in the first place. 

These comments were submitted to the Joint Panel reviewing the environmental impact of the proposed Marathon Palladium Mine. We have reviewed documents filed for investors by Generation Mining, particularly the Feasibility Study (FS) and the 2020 Annual Information Return (AIF). We also researched the history of the mine’s proponents by talking to communities where they had operated and searching publicly available literature. 
Both research projects unearthed some serious concerns about the Marathon Mine of which the Panel needs to be aware. These issues are:

Given that the process of negotiating the draft agreement excluded the region’s First Peoples, and that they are similarly excluded from any significant role in the proposed governance of the regional assessment, we insist that rather than a revision of the draft agreement – even one that engages seriously and meaningfully with the recommendations that MiningWatch and many other knowledgeable and thoughtful intervenors have put forward – the regional assessment process must be restarted in order to make a serious attempt to fulfil Canada’s obligations towards Indigenous peoples, including under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and undertake to co-design a regional assessment process that meets their needs and criteria and supports their self-determination.

In 2014, a dam breach at Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley mine resulted in the largest mine waste disaster in Canadian history. Over 24 billion litres of solid and liquid mine waste rushed downstream into the Quesnel Lake watershed, leading to a drinking water ban and destroying kilometres of forest and fish habitats in its wake. Long-term effects of this disaster, such as contamination of lake sediments and species, are still being monitored. 

The Indigenous Sovereignty: Implementing Consent for Mining on Indigenous Lands is a new report prepared by the BC First Nations Energy and Mining Council (FNEMC) setting out 25 recommendations which, if implemented, would compel mining companies and prospectors to secure the approval of First Nation governments in order to obtain consent-based access to First Nations' lands. They would further be required to agree and abide by conditions set by those First Nations governments.

Globally, there is growing recognition of the dangers posed by deep seabed mining. Here's a roundup of the communities, scientists, governments, corporations, and financial institutions already supporting a moratorium or ban.

The passing of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) by the B.C. Legislature in November 2019 was supposed to be the start of a new chapter in the nation-to-nation relationships between Indigenous peoples and the provincial government.

But two years on, implementation of the standard of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of Indigenous Nations before mining activity can take place on their territories—one of the bedrock principles on which UNDRIP is based—is still as distant as it was in 2019. Read about eight recent cases where B.C. is failing to meet Indigenous consent standards for mining.

The global mining industry, often supported by host governments, is positioning mining as a “green solution” to the climate crisis. This “green mining boom” is rapidly expanding into culturally and ecologically sensitive areas, increasingly affecting Indigenous and human rights, community livelihoods and the environment.

Communities, academics, and activists say that an energy transition that heavily depends on mining new materials without considering materials and energy for what, for whom, and at what socio-environmental costs will only reinforce injustices and lack of sustainability that have deepened the climate crisis in the first place.

In April 2021, the International Articulation of Those Affected by Vale (A Articulação Internacional dos Atingidos e Atingidas pela Vale, AIAAV) launched the Vale 2021 Unsustainability Report. Now, after a collective process of review and translation, with the support of partners in Canada, AIAAV has launched the English version of the document. The intention is for the publication to reach an even wider circulation, since a company with global operations requires processes of resistance that are, also, global.

The purpose of this Shareholder Advisory is to inform potential investors in the business combination proposed by DeepGreen Metals and Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Corporation (SOAC) to form The Metals Company (TMC). We believe that the Advisory is of particular relevance to SOAC public shareholders, who would be anticipating an investment with strong sustainability credentials and who will shortly be invited to vote on approving the business combination and/or to elect to maintain or redeem their investment. 

This report analyzes the Marathon Project with specific reference to the market prospects for palladium in the medium term. The analysis suggests that the Project entails far greater economic risk than Generation PGM’s promotional material allows. In particular, the report draws attention to the following areas of concern:

[Report available in Spanish only] The “Energy Transition” promoted by capitalists is a clear greenwashing attempt, and does not represent a significant departure from what the world already knows as an inseparable relationship to the mining extractivist model. The example of lithium in Mexico is a case in point.

Despite statements being made about world lithium shortages, and its unparalleled importance for the “energy transition”, world lithium production fell by nearly 20% in 2019, and in the same year, despite this fact, the slow growth of lithium demand only met 75% of the total supply. A slowing down in the sale of elec- tric vehicles (exacerbated by the removal of Chinese subsidies), as well as a reduction in the practice of stockpiling, among others, depressed production. Despite this, the primary sources of information for the industry, as well as the principle financial institutions, continue to insist that we are on the cusp of a lithium demand boom.