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.

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.