Canada & Murder of Environmentalists under Liberal and Conservative Governments

The Trudeau Liberal government has continued previous Canadian government's failing to curb in any way corporate Canada's abuse of the environment and murder of environmentalists in Third World countries. This is tragic, especially when it comes to Canada's mining companies that dominate much of the industry globally, carrying out murder and sexual abuse, especially with regard to environmentalists, with impunity. These firms are also allowed to destroy forests that store megatons of carbon dioxide in their pursuit of profits. 

Drone footage shows denuded forest landscapes around the Kirazli mine site in northwestern Turkey, whose Canadian owner, Alamos Gold, is facing local opposition over the project's environmental impact.COURTESY OF CANAKKALE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

 

​Since 75 per cent of the world’s mining and exploration companies are based in Canada and 40 per cent of global mining capital is raised on the Toronto Stock Exchange, it’s easy to argue that Canada is the world leader in this industry. Mining interests influence international aid, dictate the activities of our foreign diplomats and prescribe the conditions of our multilateral investment and “free  trade” agreements.

When it comes to abuse by mining companies, Canada also reigns supreme. Killings and sexual abuse by security forces and unchecked environmental devastation are regularly reported occurrences at Canadian mining sites around the world. Barrick Gold, the company founded by Peter Munk, does not escape this seeming industry norm. 

The company has acknowledged a massacre at one of its mines and compensated 120 women and girls who were gang raped at another of its sites with just over $10,000 each in exchange for signing an agreement not to sue. 

Beyond facing charges of human rights abuses, Barrick and Munk’s associated social enterprises have been accused on numerous occasions of thwarting efforts to correct the Canadian regulatory framework that allows these violations to continue. As such, it will be interesting to see how much Canadian mining impunity will feature in the foreign-policy debate hosted by none other than the Munk Debates, at Roy Thomson Hall on Monday (September 28).

According to a 2005 report from the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, “Canada does not yet have laws to ensure that the activities of Canadian mining companies in developing countries conform to human rights standards, including the rights of workers and of indigenous peoples.” 

This landmark report, the result of years of advocacy on human rights abuses at Canadian mine sites, spurred a multi-year process known as the Canadian Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the Canadian Extractive Industry. ...

Despite the painstaking effort, the report’s proposals were ignored by the Harper government. ...

The state of mining injustice today is horrifying, and it’s essential that these issues be aired to curtail the current level of impunity enjoyed by mining companies abroad.

https://nowtoronto.com/news/mining-injustice/

Here are more examples of Canada's mining industry's involvement in these murders and lax to non-existent environmental laws that have repeatedly led to death.  

Barrick Gold Corporation is a name that comes up on a number of issues. Based out of the TD Canada Trust Tower at 161 Bay Street in Toronto, their gold mine in Papua New Guinea has been the site of fatal shootings as well as of hundreds of rapes, gang rapes,and beatings of indigenous women by the mine’s security forces. Barrick has acknowledged the problem by offering victims some compensation—on the agreement they sign away their rights to ever legally sue. I wasn’t able to find any evidence of Canadian government investigation or intervention in the matter.

In the Congo in 2005, Anvil Mining Ltd, based out of Quebec, allegedly provided logistical support and transportation to the Congolese militaryas it made its way to the port city of Kilwa where it massacred hundreds of people. A Canadian organization representing survivors of the massacre, the Canadian Association Against Impunity—whose mandate is to hold mining companies in Africa accountable for their actions—had their class-action suit thrown out by the Supereme Court of Canada, saying the complaint should be heard in the Congo (whose military the mine supported). This, again, reinforces my understanding that our mining companies can act with impunity overseas, without the threat of any legal repercussions in Canada.

Calgary based TVI Pacific has employed its own paramilitary force in a remote region of the Philippines to intimidate and remove the indigenous population from their ancestral lands so they can mine for gold. In one documented incident, members of TVI’s security force—all of which are employees of Canadian companies—entered the house of a local man, beat him with a hammer, smashed a small-scale piece of mining equipment that he owned – likely his only livelihood – then, just for good measure, slapped his pregnant wife, and shot at the feet of their teenage daughter. ...

The recklessness of Vancouver-based China Gold International left 83 Tibetan miners after a landslide dead in March—a natural disaster that many believe was caused by the environmental disruption that the mining industry has caused in the area. Apparently more than 5,000 Chinese troops were sent in to “serve as rescue efforts” but a Tibetan monk from the area, who lives in Canada, believes they were actually there to curb protests by the locals.

A protest in Vancouver over our mining operations in Tibet

In Central and South America, Canada’s reputation is being dragged through the dirt to the point where in some countries, it’s apparently better for travellers to say they’re American than Canadian, and it’s not hard to see why. Vancouver-based Pacific Rim is suing the government of El Salvador, a country with a GDP of $23 Billion (Canada’s is $1.7 trillion) for $315 million dollars because they didn’t let them follow through with a mine that threatened to pollute the Lempa River—a watershed that accounts for 60% of the country’s clean water.

As if that’s not enough, a region of Guatemala was militarized last month—and the right to protest or form meetings has been suspended by the president—following clashes between local protesters who are concerned for their drinking water and employees of Vancouver-based Tahoe Resources inc.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/75-of-the-worlds-mining-companies-are...

The murder of 1,780 environmentalists identified in Global Witness's 2002 to 2018 reports is only a small fraction of those murdered globally. Not all of these murders involve Canadian firms nor the mining industry. Many of those attempting to protect the land, water and atmosphere live in remote regions where there is little or no law and their deaths are not even noted officially. Here is the url of the 2017 Global Witness report: (https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/at-wh...)

According to the Brazilian environmental watchdog Comissao Pastoral da Terra (CPT), the death toll in Brazil alone is even worse than that reported by Global Witness. 

More than 1,500 Brazilians have been killed trying to protect the Amazon rain forest over the past 25 years, and some 2,000 more have received death threats. ...

For decades, Brazil has struggled with how to manage the staggering natural resources of the Amazon. The region, which is nearly the size of the contiguous United States, shelters 10 percent of the Earth's known species. The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group, estimates that an average four-square-mile plot in the Amazon contains 750 species of trees, 400 species of birds, and 150 species of butterflies. The rich soil means there's also huge financial potential for farming and livestock. In the 1970s, the country's dictatorship inaugurated a policy known as integrar para não entregar (­"Occupy it, or risk losing it"), and a frenetic landgrab ensued. The new land barons seized vast tracts of forest, which they promptly clear-cut. The timber was sold to foreign countries or burned to make charcoal, and the land was planted with soybeans or populated with cattle.

This, in part, has led to Brazil's emergence as a global economic power. It is already the world's largest exporter of beef and the second-largest supplier of soybeans. ...

In July 2011, public outcry over the violence forced the Brazilian government to announce that it would provide protection to approximately 130 threatened activists, and at the end of September, four months after Zé and Maria's deaths, the country's Council of Justice unveiled plans to create a special task force to investigate the killing of activists. According to federal prosecutor Pontes, however, only five of the 40 threatened activists in Pará have received any government protection. A spokeswoman for the Council of Justice said that her office has actually reduced the number of unsolved murders from nearly 700 to 74. ("The court figured that a dispute over land was not the main reason behind many of the murders," she said.)

Brent Rushforth, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., who in 2005 helped Brazil prosecute the killers of a 73-year-old American nun and rain forest activist named Dorothy Stang, blames flaws in the country's legal system for the inefficacy of these programs. "Brazilian criminal law is a stew that's made up of common law, Napoleonic code, and Brazilian salsa," Rushforth says. "The Amazon is so vast and completely unfettered to any true rule of law." Rushforth says that to find the men who killed Stang, the Brazilian government had to send its army into the rain forest – and it did so only in response to international pressure.

Many believe that the Brazilian legislature operates under the undue influence of the ranchers, who have the money to win favor. ...

 The Brazilian congress voted to amend the country's forest code, granting amnesty to ranchers who have illegally cleared land while also reducing the percentage of holdings that they're required to preserve. As an ecologist with Greenpeace put it, "Brazil woke up to the news of the murders of two leading environmental activists, and it's going to bed with the murder of the forest code."

Meanwhile, the killings and death threats continue.

http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/murder-in-the-amazon-brazils-endange...

Another example of how the Canadian government and courts fail to do anything to stop the murder of environmentalists occurred in Mexico. 

On August 19, the Abarca family held a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the murder of Mariano Abarca over his opposition to Canadian mining operations in Mexico - Courtesy of Otros Mundos

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On August 19, members of the Abarca family, along with a number of Mexican organizations, held a press conference in San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, to mark the 10th anniversary of the murder of Mariano Abarca.

The former community leader was gunned down in broad daylight outside his home in November 2009. 

The Federal Court of Canada recently decided not to order the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner to investigate alleged “actions and omissions” on the part of officials at the Canadian embassy in Mexico City in the months leading up to Abarca's death. 

Abarca had gone to the embassy to report threats and allegations of harassment against community members in Chiapas opposed to a barite mine in Chicomuselo operated by Calgary-based Blackfire Exploration. ...

In a 26-page decision published on July 18, Federal Court Justice Keith Boswell conceded that “perhaps Mariano Abarca would not have been murdered” if the embassy had “acted in a certain way.” But Boswell determined that the integrity commissioner’s decision not to investigate the actions of embassy officials was acceptable. Moreover, he ruled that it was “reasonable” to conclude that Canadian embassy officials in Mexico did not violate any code of conduct. Officials had travelled to Chiapas to discuss issues with locals and mining officials. 

But the judge appears to have based this conclusion on the presumption that Canadian government policies related to corporate social responsibility, corruption, and human rights are not binding on embassy officials.

https://miningwatch.ca/news/2019/9/3/mining-murder-and-canadian-impunity...

Canada plays a major role in Mexican mining and also has a terrible record there. 

 

A MINING FACILITY IN CHIAPAS, MEXICO OWNED BY CALGARY-BASED COMPANY, BLACKFIRE EXPLORATION, LTD. IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA. 

An employee of a Canadian-owned gold mine in Cocula, Mexico is among two people still missing days after local police freed ten others said to be victims of a kidnapping. The group was travelling in an SUV about 30 minutes outside of Coculaon Friday when kidnappers dressed as police or military personnel abducted them. 

Mexico's interior ministry said Sunday that ten of the victims were "rescued" by local Mexican forces, with one being treated for a gunshot wound. Three of the victims were hired at Media Luna on contract.

It all happened in the troubled Mexican state of Guerrero, where 43 student-teachers were allegedly murdered and burned to ashes in September by Mexican narco-traffickers colluding with state forces. ...

The recent kidnapping is just the latest in a dizzying web of corruption, collusion, and human rights abuses that constantly revolve around Canadian-owned mines in Latin America. 

And while Cocula is a case unique to Mexico's troubled political landscape, it serves as a reminder for Canadians to more closely examine perhaps the nation's best-kept secret: our mining companies are under accusation of constant human rights breaches.

Canadian mining activity in Latin America has skyrocketed over the past decade. Acting on 1994's North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada signed agreements with several Latin American countries to facilitate easy access for resource extraction. Those countries include Peru (2009), Colombia (2011), Panama (2013), and Honduras (2014). As such, five of the top ten locations for Canada's international mining assets in 2014 were Latin American countries. According to Natural Resources Canada, the value of Canadian mining assets abroad reached $148.7 billion in 2012, accounting for 66 percent of all Canadian mining assets. Canadian activities in Mexico are especially pronounced. With nearly 200 companies in operation, Mexico is the top destination for Canadian mining investment outside of Canada. In Guerrero, terror, violence, and intimidation are a daily occurrence and the gold is said to be cheap and easy to mine. Indeed, Canadian companies such as Goldcorp, Newstrike Capital, Alamos Gold, and Torex Gold Resources all have a strong presence there. 

Several experts have pointed to the recent incident in Cocula as part of a battle between armed narco-trafficking groups struggling for power. MiningWatch Canada says it's an "all-out war" between these crime groups in nearly every municipality in Guerrero. 

In Mexico, like in other Latin American countries (including Canadian trade partners Colombia and Peru), foreign mining companies indirectly deal with local narco or paramilitary groups for access.  ...

Countless cases of violence in Mexico are connected to the country's strangling presence of narco-traffickers, but the end result often mirrors that of mineral-rich countries like Colombia, Peru, Honduras, and Guatemala, among others. Locals and activists standing in the way of foreign investment are often met with violence from paramilitary groups. ...

The same trends surface in resource-rich areas across Latin America. In Colombia, Paley has written about the "militarization of the extractive industry," where US-trained energy battalions protected pipelines, roads, and other infrastructure. She says the US-funded "War on Drugs" is used as a pretext to improve conditions for foreign investment. ...

As a result of all of Canada's free-trade agreements with Latin American nations, Kopecky said companies are entering territories without firm regulatory checks. Social corporate responsibility amounts to little more than propaganda for many of these companies. ​

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/7b7ned/canadian-mining-companies-are-...

Canadian corporations, operating internationally with the support of Liberal and Conservative governments have been involved in many human rights abuses and environmental disasters as their profits soar. 

 Protesters in the community of Casillas, praying for calm amid rumours the army is on its way to evict their anti-mining roadblock. Photograph: Nina Lakhani

In Guatemala, one of the world’s largest silver deposits reaps millions for its Canadian owners but for local farmers the price is their land and even their lives. ...

On a dusty highway, about 50 peasant farmers stand praying in a circle, a makeshift roadblock intended to stop trucks reaching the mine. They have already been violently dispersed by police teargas. Now they fear the army might move in.

The contrast couldn’t be greater: the mine extracted more than $350m (£270m) worth of silver last year. The protesters, men, women and children turning out for 12-hour vigils, eke out a living by farming coffee, maize and small herds of cattle. 

This is a perennial frontline in a deadly battle fought by land rights activists against corporate interests in Guatemala, a clash of interests that have made the country one of the most perilous places in the world for environmentalists, according to the NGO Global Witness.

Since 2010 at least 41 people have been killed – including eight at the Canadian-owned mine, Escobal.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/13/the-canadian-company...

Canada's mining industry is also making itself felt in Brazil as it generates more than $50 billion in profits. 

Canada’s mining industry plays a significant and influential role internationally, with 30 Canadian mining companies operating in Brazil, for example. Further, Canadian mining firms were given advance notice earlier this year about the Brazilian government’s plans to open up a vast region in the Amazon to mineral extraction. Canada’s mining sector contributed $56 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product in 2015. ...

LaPointe emphasized that: “The problem is that the industry is not yet acknowledging publicly that there are too many financially risky, marginal mines that are being permitted.” He maintained that marginally profitable companies and mines are a major part of the problem because they cut corners on safety and don’t have the money to guarantee the safety of people and the environment.

https://news.mongabay.com/2017/12/mine-tailings-dam-failures-major-cause...

double post

Even before the request by the Sierra Club's to stop trade talks with Brazil because of the environmental destruction of the Amazon and its indigenous people, indigenous land protectors were being murdered in greater numbers, including by miners, an industry where 75% of corporate headquarters are in Canada because of its lax international mining laws. At the beginning of November, another one was murdered. 

Waiapi people in Manila village in the Waiapi indigenous land in Amapa state, Brazil, in March 2019. Apu Gomes

In July, Viseni Waiapi, an indigenous environmental leader warned about the danger for indigenous people.

Illegal gold miners armed with automatic weapons and shotguns, invaded the remote indigenous community of the Waiapi and murdered one of its chiefs in Brazil’s northern Amazon last week, according to several of the group’s leaders and indigenous rights activists.

The body of chief Emyra Waiapi, 68, was discovered last Monday with several stab wounds, including to his genitals, one of the group’s leaders, Viseni Waiapi, said in an audio message sent to NBC reporters Saturday in Portuguese.

“We are in great danger,” Viseni said. The invaders assaulted women and children and were accompanied by a pit bull as they roamed around several Waiapi villages day and night last week, using special night vision goggles to navigate the area in the dark, he said.

The murder of international indigenous environmentalists contines with the latest being on November 2nd. 

 

 Paulo Paulino was a member of Guardians of the Forest, formed to ward off illegal logging gangs. 

A Brazilian indigenous land defender has been killed in an ambush by illegal loggers in an Amazon frontier region.

According to a statement by the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Association, Paulo Paulino Guajajara was shot and killed inside the Araribóia indigenous territory in Maranhão state. Another tribesman, Laércio Guajajara, was also shot and hospitalised and a logger has been reported missing. No body has yet been recovered. ...

The tribesmen are members of an indigenous forest guard called Guardians of the Forest, which formed in 2012 to ward off logging gangs pillaging their rare, hardwood-rich reserve.

Their work involves armed patrols and destroying logging encampments and has earned them dangerous enemies. Several Guardians in Maranhão have been killed in recent years, including three from Araribóia. ...

Few land conflict-related killings in Brazil result in convictions, which advocates say has produced a culture of impunity. According to Brazil’s pastoral land commission, a rural violence watchdog, of 157 land conflict killings in Maranhão state between 1985 and 2017, just five cases went to court.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/02/brazilian-forest-guardian-...

The Trudeau Liberal government has failed to keep its 2015 election promis to appoint an independent Ombudsman with the power to compel documents and witnesses, to investigate mining cases and to apply sanctions to situations involving Canadian mining firms carrying out illegal and often violent activities. 

Toronto demonstration in support of independent powers for the CORE, May 4, 2019. Photo courtesy Mining Injustice Solidarity Network.

On April 8, 2019, the Minister of International Trade Diversification appointed Sheri Meyerhoffer as a public servant under thePublic Service Employment Act[1]and as a “special advisor to the Minister for International Trade”. 

MiningWatch Canada’s Position

The Government of Canada has fundamentally broken its electoral promise of 2015 and its commitment of January 17, 2018 to create an Ombudsperson with: independence from both government and industry; strong investigatory powers to compel documents and witnesses, when necessary, in the course of investigating complaints brought against Canadian mining companies for human rights abuses perpetrated overseas; and the ability to make determinations of fact about whether a Canadian company had caused or contributed to human rights harm.[3]Fifteen months after the commitment to create a strong ombudsperson was made in 2018, the government has created an advisory position to the Minister with a deeply flawed and inadequate mandate. 

Broken Promises

Promise broken – No powers to compel documents and witnesses

In January, 2018, the Government of Canada committed to giving the Ombudsperson the investigatory powers to compel documents and witnesses. 

In order to have the powers to compel witnesses and documents, in cases in which companies are not forthcoming with necessary information, the Ombudsperson should have been created through an Order in Council mandate under the Inquiries Act. 

The Government of Canada and Minister of International Trade were fully briefed and aware of this option. Instead, the “special advisor to the Minister” was created under the Public Service Employment Act, which does not provide for powers to compel documents or witnesses. Minister Carr says he has commissioned further legal review to look into the question of how best to give the advisor to the Minister the power to make companies disclose documents and answer questions. This review is to be done by early June.[4]

As the Government of Canada has not managed to ensure an Ombudsperson with the powers to compel documents and witnesses in the 15 months since announcing the creation of an Ombudsperson MiningWatch is highly sceptical of the government’s commitment to keep this promise.  ...

Promise broken – No ability to recommend sanctions for companies that have caused, or contributed to, human rights abuses

In January 2018, the Government of Canada committed to creating an Ombudsperson that could recommend that the government deny or withdraw trade advocacy support and future Export Development Canada financial support from a company that had caused or contributed to human rights abuses. 

The Order in Council mandate of the advisor to the Minister only allows the advisor to the Minister to recommend the denial and withdrawal of trade advocacy support and future Export Development Canada financial support from a company “[i]f a Canadian company has not acted in good faith during the course of or during follow-up of the review process.”[7]

This broken promise is closely related to the broken promise in regard to the powers to compel documents and witnesses. In order to make a determination of fact, which can be reported publicly with confidence, that a company is in fact responsible for having caused, or contributed to, a human rights harm, an Ombudsperson may require access to critical company documents or testimony in a case. Only if an Ombudsperson can be confident in its assessment that a company has caused or contributed to a human rights harm will that Ombudsperson be able to recommend that the Government of Canada deny or withdraw trade advocacy support and future Export Development Canada financial support from a company on the basis of having caused or contributed to a human rights abuse.

The logical implication of not creating an Ombudsperson with the powers to compel witnesses and documents is that the Government of Canada has created an advisor to the Minister who may not have the necessary tools to be able to make determinations of fact about whether or not a company caused or contributed to a human rights abuse.

Promise broken – No independence

In January, 2018, the Government of Canada committed to creating an independent Ombudsperson.[8]

By creating an advisor to the Minister under the Public Service Employment Act, and by stating in the Order in Council mandate that all reports prepared by the advisor to the Minister must first be provided to the Minister of International Trade before they are published,[9]the Government of Canada has not created an independent Ombudsperson, but rather a public servant that will always act in consideration of whether the Minister will approve of the text provided. As ministers are subject to being lobbied by the very companies under investigation this requirement works against independence of the advisor to the Minister. It should be noted that the former Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor (CSR Counsellor) was under the same orders to first provide reports to Ministers before they would become public.  ...

https://miningwatch.ca/blog/2019/5/4/canada-still-needs-ombudsperson-inv...

An early test of where the Trudeau Liberals intend to go after the election comes with  Teck Resource Ltd’s Frontier major open-pit oil sands mine proposal in Alberta. It is located on indigenous pristine Treaty 8 land and has a goal of producing 260,000 barrels of bitumen per day. This project would ensure Canada could never meet its Paris Agreement targets, which are already very unlikely to be met according to Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand, who stated "Canada is not on track to hit its 2030 target" in her April 2019 report (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-julie-gelfand-...) 

 

Indigenous, environmental and public interest groups wasted no time challenging the new cabinet to live up to those promises (and another to build nation-to-nation relationships with First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples) by rejecting Teck Resource Ltd’s Frontier mine proposal.

The Alberta government of Premier Jason Kenney gave its approval to the project in late October, moving the regulatory process to Ottawa where it is now pending federal cabinet approval.

The decision will be a key early indicator of how this cabinet configuration will direct itself when it comes to the thorny nexus between environment and energy.

Public submissions on the project are being accepted by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada — the watchdog that earlier this year replaced the National Energy Board (NEB), the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency — until Nov. 24.

The Frontier site is located about 110 kilometres northwest of Fort McMurray, and is expected to produce about 260,000 barrels per day of bitumen once operational, according to Teck.

The major open-pit oil sands mine proposal is also located on Treaty 8 territory in a pristine area home to the last wild, disease-free herds of Wood Bison, and on the migratory path of the endangered Whooping Crane, a coalition of northern Alberta students, Indigenous community members, scientists and workers said in a statement.

The mine would cause “irreversible harm” to the Peace-Athabasca Delta and “directly compromise” Canada’s ability to reach its Paris Agreement targets, said the group, which includes Indigenous Climate Action, Climate Justice Edmonton, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Keepers of the Water and Oil Change International.

Keith Stewart, Greenpeace’s senior energy strategist, said efforts to appease Alberta and other provinces reliant on oil and gas production could easily derail meaningful climate action.

“We shouldn't try to fool ourselves,” he said. “Getting to net-zero emissions means phasing out the production and consumption of fossil fuels.

“That’s going to be incredibly hard to do in a way that deals fairly with the workers and regions currently dependent on oil, but the only thing harder would be to suffer the consequences of failing to make this transition."

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/11/21/analysis/will-trudeaus-new-c...

The same open letter to the Canadian Parliament shows the link between the murder of  and the attempted assasination of France Marquez,  a prominent leader of the black community and 2018 co-recipient of the Premio Goldman Ambiental who survived an assassination attempt in the region of Cauca, Colombia.

No to mining in Yaigoje-Apaporis National Park by Canadian Cosigo Resources Ltd (Tobie Mining)

On 4 May 2019, FRANCE MARQUEZ, a prominent leader of the black community and 2018 co-recipient of the Premio Goldman Ambiental , survived an assassination attempt in the region of Cauca, Colombia (Semana, Contagio Radio, El Tiempo, El Espectador, France24). It is likely that this attack is associated with the recent statements by the former president and now senator Alvaro Uribe Velez in in which he incites a massacre of the members of the Minga, according to Luis Fernando Arias, senior advisor of the Colombian National Organization of Indigenous Peoples ONIC (Luis Fernando Arias, consejero mayor de las ONIC). ...

Advisor of the Association of Community Councils of Northern Cauca (ACONC) and Clemencia Carabali of the Association of Afro-descendant women of Northern Cauca (ASOM) and of the Social and Political National Movement of Black Women, Afro-colombian, Palenqueras and Aboriginals in their diverse identities, among others. Three of the leaders already had security protection (armoured cars and bodyguards) because they had previously received threats against their lives for for their ongoing work on human, ethnic and territorial rights in the country. Thanks to the reaction of their security escorts, they managed to avoid a massacre. ...

"The Northern Cauca is an area where there is illegal mining and unconstitutional mining (without free and informed prior consultation with the communities), as well as where there has been an increase in coca production for illegal use. It is a region marked equally by mega-projects and industrial parks. ...

Very soon after this attack, one of the spokespersons received a threat of extermination: "this is only the beginning of what will be the extermination of all of you" (Semana, 6 de mayo de 2019).

The perverse investment clause, conceived in the Canada-Colombia FTA , allows Canadian mining companies to file leonine lawsuits against the Colombian State. Canadian Cosigo Resources Ltd (Tobie Mining) sued Colombia for the colossal sum of US $16.5 billion dollars, equivalent to about 50 billion pesos, or one fifth of the national budget in 2017. After the mining company invested a mere US$ 20,000 dollars, it alleged a supposed "expropriation" of a claim which was without effect, since it had been granted in the protected Yaigoje-Apaporis National Park and a few days later was withdrawn by the Colombian environmental authority. According to the multinational’s calculations of the “crime”, their damages would be equivalent to the fabulous sum mentioned (La minera que pide 16.500 millones de dólares de indemnización a Colombia. Semana, 6 November 2017). The Tobie Mining will not be able to take the gold that it planned to extract for 20 years, so now it seeks to take this fabulous sum of money that represents 20 years of extraction of gold.

This is a perverse play under the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement!

How much desolation and death will this colossal financial plunder the coffers of the Colombian State produce?

According to Francia Márquez, “until the year 2016 there had been issued in the department of Cauca 236 mining titles, covering 40% of the territory, and located largely in the Colombian Massif, on lands traditionally occupied by indigenous people and by people of Afro-Colombian descent. The extractive companies are pushing us out of our territories. When communities have won litigations, arguing their title rights as per the Consulta Previa Law (aboriginal title), as was the case of La Toma, municipality of Suarez, Judgment T1045A of 2010, where the Court revoked the license of the AngloGold Ashanti, we begin to receive the types of death threats that made it necessary for me to leave the territory. When the Courts have ruled in favor of the community then there has been an increase in the killings, the forced displacements, the stigmatization of our leaders(as) by armed actors, as well as increases in judicial persecution on the part of the same State, with the intention of ensuring and protecting the interests of the big companies. Those mining companies not only expel us from our or territory, not only destroy our lives, but also want to have us pay them for such destruction. The 50 billion pesos that are being claimed as 'compensation' to TOBIE Mining could instead be used pay reparations to all victims of the armed conflict in the Pacific region Colombia” (Interview 19.05.27).

Throughout the process of the adoption on the part of the Canadian Parliament of the Tratado de Libre Comercio Canadá-Colombia (TLC-CC), SOS-Colombia, a coalition of different movements and of social and trade union organizations in Quebec and in the rest of Canada, along with political opposition groups, notably the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois, led a strong opposition to the TLC-CC. ...

http://pasc.ca/en/article/murder-social-leaders-colombia-what-role-gover...

Chandu Claver is a Filipino medical doctor and indigenous refugee now living in Victoria, BC, who protested against Canadian mining companies and other companies whose operations were destroying the environment and damaging the health of indigenous people  operating in the Philippines. As a result of his protests Dr. Claver, his wife and one of his daughters were targets of a political assassination attempt. While Dr. Claver and his daughter survived, his wife died. 

Chandu Claver poses in his Victoria backyard with daughters (from left) Alex, 12; Samantha, 17; and, Sandy, 15. Chad Hipolitophotograph for the Globe and Mail.

 

Guerrilla activity in the region sparked by long-standing grievances triggered a massive military response in the early 1990s. ... The guerrilla threat abated. The military remained though. Claver and others believe the military presence was now intended to counter opposition to government plans to open up indigenous land to foreign mining interests, Canadian corporations included among them. Now Claver’s human rights efforts focused on the right of indigenous people to participate in the decisions determining the development of their lands. (https://www.yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/choosing-to-serve-the-people/)

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Claver was running a one-man surgical hospital in Tabuk, while every two months he’d spend a couple of weeks voluntarily bringing health care to remote indigenous villages of the area. Claver himself is indigenous, of the Igorot tribes of the Cordillera. ...

To those familiar with British Columbia aboriginal rights issues, Claver’s explanation of the fundamentally conflicting views in the Philippines is recognizable. “They see that everything around them is connected,” says Claver, who shifts between using “we” or “they” in relation to indigenous peoples. “So the land, the sea, the water, the skies, the minerals, the trees, animals, fauna, all these are connected and comprehensively linked to support life, including people. So they cannot understand how you can actually compartmentalize things, like mine out the minerals without affecting the rest…And when you start saying that this land is for a mining company and nobody else, that’s not something we can grasp. And that’s where it all starts; that’s where the violations of rights start.” ...

As Tabuk grew and surgeon specialists began arriving, Claver turned to general medical practice. He also increased his volunteering as a leader with the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (cpaphils.org), a multi-sectoral organization of 150 grassroots groups that advocate for indigenous people’s rights. The organization “became very influential and strong,” says Claver.

But in the late 90s, new, even more permissive mining and land expropriation laws were passed. There was also a push towards “free trade” and “globalization,” and, after 9/11, a tightening relationship between the Filipino and US governments. All these factors led to dramatically worsening conditions and tensions around the country. The Philippine military, says Claver, even set up a specialized “Investment Defense Force” to help protect mining companies from the growing protest movements. Worse, “extrajudicial” assassinations became rampant: Since 2001, over 1,500 activists and members of social justice organizations have been killed or “disappeared,” says Claver. None of the attackers have ever been convicted, but, according to Claver, a damning secret document obtained by Philippine media revealed that military intelligence seemed to have begun regarding many legitimate political and non-profit organizations as merely branches of known terrorist and armed rebel groups.

One day, without warning, Dr. Chandu Claver became a target for assassination. ...

“As I was making a turn, a van cut me off,” says Claver. Next, two people stepped out of the van, raised automatic rifles and unloaded 38 rounds into the Claver family car. One daughter was never hit. Claver’s other daughter took a bullet to the head but, miraculously, it only scraped her scalp. Claver himself took three bullets in the shoulder and one in his abdomen. Claver’s wife of 15 years, Alice, took seven bullets near her heart, and would die on the operating table. ...

Claver has also been learning about his new homeland—how destructive a role Canadian mining companies and the Canadian government have been playing in BC, in the Philippines, and around the world, and how few Canadians realize the extent of it. So educating Canadians, says Claver, has become an important part of the process towards getting justice for his wife.

A powerful new book (Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for World's Mining Industries) may help his efforts.

https://robwipond.com/archives/1165

Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Gize Yebeyo Araya, et al. is a Supreme Court of Canada lawsuit which will set important precedents for Canadian companies operating abroad, such as Nevsun which operates in Eritrea and elsewhere. This is especially important for mining companies as 75% of mining companies in the world are registered in Canada. 

MINING PROCESS AT THE BISHA MINE // SOURCE: NEVSUN RESOURCES

The Nevsun case began in November 2014, when three Eritrean refugees filed a lawsuit against Nevsun in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. It might seem strange that the lawsuit was filed in British Columbia – and it is. We’ll discuss this later, but the main reason the lawsuit went before the BC Supreme Court was due to the fact that Nevsun was headquartered in Vancouver. The allegations pointed at the company for complicity in torture, forced labour, and crimes against humanity (a phrase used to describe certain grave acts like murder or enslavement that are deliberately committed against civilians in a systematic or widespread way). ...

Nevsun Resources Ltd. is a base metals mining company that, until recently, was headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Incorporated in 1965, the company has steadily grown and now operates its two principle properties in Serbia and Eritrea. ...

Nevsun denied the allegations and motioned for the BC Supreme court to dismiss the case because the alleged crimes took place in Eritrea. The Court ruled against Nevsun and decided that the case could continue in Canada. In response, Nevsun filed an appeal to the BC Court of Appeal in 2017, again arguing that the case is not admissible in Canadian courts. The Court of Appeal rejected this appeal.

Unsatisfied with this decision, Nevsun sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2018 and now the Court is in the process of making its judgment on whether the case can be heard by the High Court. As it stands, the Court is deliberating about whether or not the lawsuit is admissible and the original allegations remain unjudged. ...

So, can a Canadian court hear a case about Canadian companies violating rights abroad? Yes. In the Supreme Court’s famous Chevron case, the Court affirmed that it does have jurisdiction over cases where it has a “real and substantial connection” with the parties or with the subject matter. In fact, Canadian courts have agreed to hear lawsuits against Canadian companies Tahoe Resources and HudBay Minerals for violations in Guatemala.

But questions still remain for this case. Nevsun’s legal representative, Luis Sarabia of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, has already brought up two issues with the case: first, trying Nevsun in domestic courts for international crimes means applying customary international law domestically; second, is the concept that says that Canadian courts should not sit in judgment of the action of foreign governments.

With regard to the first issue, the Supreme Court has already confirmed in R v Hape (2007) that prohibitive rules of customary international law are part of domestic law, so long as they do not conflict with existing Canadian legislation. According to this, applying customary international law domestically is not a problem in the Nevsun case.

The second, so-called “act of state” issue has already been addressed by the BC Court of Appeal, who held that the victims’ claims are based on the action of Nevsun and not the Eritrean government. There is no need to judge Eritrea’s conduct because the behaviour was clearly illegal under Eritrean law.

The judgment is still pending but, as it looks now, the case is suited for Canada’s Supreme Court.

https://humanrightshub.ca/2019/02/21/why-care-about-nevsun-case/

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Hopefully the SCC will just deny leave to appeal without reasons and bump it back to the BC Supreme Court for a decision on its merits. BC's Howe Street elite with its interlocked mining and legal firms has blood on its hands, hopefully someone will be held to account for the outrageous businesses practices that ooze out of our country.

Unfortunately, Canadian courts have done very little to deal with the violence by Canadian mining and other corportations in other countries, as illustrated by the 2011 decision in the Court of Appeal for Ontario case involving Ecuadorian campesinos who sued  the Canadian mining company Copper Mesa Mining Corporation that hired Ecuadorian security forces to assault the campesinos. The court also ruled that the TSE stock exchange had no obligation to delist or refuse to list corporations that had a record of violence.

The only good thing that happened is the Copper Mesa Mining Corporation ran out of money, was delisted because of this and lost its mining concession, but this had nothing to do with the Canadian legal system. 

Canadian law continues to fail communities harmed by Canadian mining overseas

On Friday, March 11, 2011, the Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed an appeal by Ecuadorian campesinos who say they were assaulted by security forces hired on behalf of a Canadian mining company in their native Ecuador. 

Marcia Ramírez, Polivio Peréz and Israel Peréz had sued Canadian mining company Copper Mesa Mining Corporation and two of its directors as well as the Toronto Stock Exchange, which the Ecuadorians say listed the mining company on its stock exchange after having been warned that money from the listing would lead to violence.  Ramírez, Peréz and Peréz had appealed an earlier decision that dismissed their lawsuit.

In the ruling, the Court recognized that “[t]he threats and assaults alleged by the plaintiffs are serious wrongs.  Nothing in these reasons should be taken as undermining the plaintiffs’ rights to seek appropriate redress for those wrongs”, but nonetheless ruled against the Ecuadorians.

“I know Marcia, Polivio and Israel will be disappointed that no one will be held accountable for the violent attacks they endured at the hands of the Canadian mining industry,” said Murray Klippenstein, legal counsel for the Ecuadorians.  “Armed men linked to Canadian mining company Copper Mesa came into their community and attacked them. The directors of Copper Mesa based in Toronto were shown photographs of this attack.  You would think at the very least, that when directors of a Canadian corporation have been warned and given evidence that company personnel are assaulting people, they would have to do something to stop further violence.  The Court said that under Canadian law, directors don’t have to do anything whatsoever." ...

The judgment also confirmed that the Toronto Stock Exchange is under no legal duty to consider human rights records when deciding whether to list corporations on its stock exchange, even in cases where the TSX has been informed of past violence caused by the corporation.

This ruling paves the way for Canadian mining companies to continue to raise money on the Toronto Stock Exchange without the TSX having any regard at all for potential violence and harm that is likely to be caused by these funds in areas of the world where human rights abuse is common.

The Toronto Stock Exchange is a for-profit corporation that took in $142.1 million in 2009 through listing fees.  The TSX lists more mining corporations than any other stock exchange in the world and routinely lists corporations with mining projects in countries known for severe problems with violence including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma, Zimbabwe and Guatemala. ...

“There is a silver lining to this story. Copper Mesa ran out of money.  It was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange, and it lost its mining concession.  In the end, there is no massive open pit copper mine destroying the environment and villages around Junín, which were what Marcia, Polivio and Israel were fighting to protect from the start.”

In 2015 the CBC reported that the Canadian government through its embassy engaged in intelligence gathering for Excellon Resources Inc. in its dispute with the community around the La Platosa mine and pushed for state police and the army support of the mine owners, despite its violent actions. 

Ejido La Sierrita community members gather in the shade of a tent in the summer of 2012 during a protest outside Excellon Resources’ La Platosa silver mine in Durango, Mexico. A new report says Canadian diplomats went too far in their attempts to protect Excellon’s interests in a dispute with the Ejido La Sierrita. (Ejido La Sierrita)

Canadian diplomats and trade commissioners went further than they should have in their quest to protect the interests of mining company Excellon Resources Inc. in a dispute with local workers and landowners at a silver mine in Mexico, critics say. ...

​Emails written during a blockade and protest in the summer of 2012 were obtained by MiningWatch Canada through an access to information request to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

At the time, tensions were rising between Excellon, some of the workers at the La Platosamine and Ejido La Sierrita, the community that owned the land on which the mine was operating.

Landowners were upset, they said, because Excellon wasn't meeting its contractual obligations, for example, to build a water treatment plant for the polluted water coming from the mine.

The protesters filed two formal complaints in Canada, including one with the federal Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor. ...

"There was a clause violated that would have meant they didn't fulfil their obligations," Daniel Pacheco said in a Skype interview from Durango. They need to respect the rights of those in our community because the landowners are the ones that form the communities."

At one point, police and the army moved in to try to persuade the protesters to leave. They didn't go until their protest camp was forcibly broken up shortly after. ...

Now, MiningWatch Canada has obtained internal emails that suggest the Canadian Embassy may have gone too far in protecting Excellon's interests. ...

In one email, the ambassador agreed to a meeting with the protesters "to listen, possibly to gather intel helpful to the company."

Others show the embassy had arranged meetings with Mexican authorities at Excellon's request.

"We no longer have any choice but to shut the mine down and flood it in an orderly fashion, as we do not currently see any near term solution to this situation," current Excellon CEO Brendan Cahill wrote to embassy staff on Aug. 14, 2012.

"We would appreciate it if you could organize a meeting with the governor of Durango for Peter Crossgrove [then executive chairman, president and CEO] for next week.… We will need some support from the state police to ensure that we can properly flood the mine without damage to our own equipment, and to ensure the safe removal of equipment by third party contractors (drill rigs, etc.). Please call me to discuss in the morning. As always, we very much appreciate your help."

But within two weeks of that email, the military and approximately 40 police officers were sent to the protest. The night before, one trade commissioner sent an email wishing Excellon well.

"I was quite alarmed to find no evidence that the embassy was at all concerned about the physical integrity and safety of the peaceful protesters from the Ejido La Sierrita and the workers," said Jen Moore, who wrote the report for MiningWatch Canada.

"It's also appalling, although it's no longer surprising to me, that contrary to what the Canadian government says in terms of encouraging companies to behave responsibly and to abide by local and state laws, the documentation was absolutely, there was no evidence that the Canadian government was urging the company to dialogue with the workers and with the landowners, to address the really reasonable demands they were making of company in order to respect their land and their decisions over their land, and to follow through on its contractual agreement."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/canadian-embassy-went-too-far-to...

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is sending a bill through the legislature that would open up indigenous reserves in the Amazon to exploitation by fossil fuel, ranching and mining interests. With 75% of mining companies headquartered in Canada because of our extremely lax laws governing international operations and a history of brutal actions and even murder against local communities around the world (see previous posts for details), this greatly increases the risk indigenous Brazilians, as well as other land defenders there, face. The murder of indigenous land defenders has already increased under Bolsonaro and there is also a danger of Christian fundamentalists brutally dealing with indigenous populations as they have done in the past.

President Jair Bolsonaro pressed forward with a "dream" initiative sending a bill to the Brazilian Congress on Wednesday that would open indigenous reserves in the Amazon and elsewhere to development, including commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, cattle ranching and agribusiness, new hydroelectric dam projects, and tourism — projects that have been legally blocked under the country's 1988 Constitution.

Justifying the legislation, Bolsonaro explained that "The Indian is a human being exactly like us. They have hearts, feelings, a soul, desires, needs and they are just as Brazilian as we are," so they will welcome economic exploitation inside their territories. Bolsonaro and the bancada ruralistaagribusiness and mining lobby, which is very strong in Congress, have eyed the off-limits indigenous lands for decades. Indigenous territories have the best record for forest conservation and land stewardship in Brazil.

Marcio Santilli, a former head of FUNAI, Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, sees Bolsonaro's "dream" legislation very differently. It will "not promote the economic development of the Indians, but guarantee the exploitation by third parties of their natural resources. It would encourage Indians to live from royalties while watching the dispossession of their lands." ...

Since Bolsonaro's election, conflicts between ruralists and indigenous people have soared. The latest report from CIMI, the Indigenous Missionary Council, shows a steady growth in the number of invasions of indigenous areas, up from 111 in 2018 to 160 in 2019; indigenous leaders say Bolsonaro's speeches and comments have contributed to the increase. Five murders due to indigenous and traditional land conflicts occurred in the first weeks of 2020.

 

Uncontacted indigenous group in the Brazilian state of Acre. Gleilson Miranda / Governo do Acre ...

But the bill isn't the only potential threat to uncontacted tribes. The day before Bolsonaro announced his legislation, FUNAI appointed an evangelical preacher and agency outsider to head the Department for Isolated and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples (CGIIRC). To accomplish this, FUNAI had to revoke its own long-established rule that only a qualified staff member could be chosen to head such a sensitive bureau. The new head, Ricardo Lopes Dias, has strong views regarding the conversion of indigenous people to Christianity. ...

The New Tribes Mission has been accused of causing death and disease among the tribes it worked with in the 1970s, subjecting them to enforced conversion to evangelical Christianity.

Isolated or uncontacted indigenous peoples are usually survivors of larger groups which were decimated by disease or violence when the military dictatorship (ruling from 1964-1985) forced roads through ancestral lands in the Amazon during the 1960s and 70s. In some cases up to 90 percent of local populations died. This led FUNAIi, in the 1980s, after the dictatorship ended, to introduce a policy of non-contact, designating a "no go" zone protecting the survivors, who became known as "isolated Indians."

The choice by the Bolsonaro administration of an evangelical missionary to head the department, according to experts, indicates a shift in this policy, and has been greeted with dismay by indigenous organizations, who regard it as a means of opening up uncontacted tribes under the protection of FUNAI, and putting their cosmological and ethical belief systems at risk from religious fundamentalism.

https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-bolsonaro-bill-open-indigenous-land-2645...

As the following article in Canadian Lawyer Magazine outlines, the Supreme Court ruling in the Nevsun vs Araya case concerning modern slavery and other human rights abuses described in the last post has important implications for other Canadian companies operating abroad, some of which are already involved in similar lawsuits.

Nevsun’s flagship copper-zinc Bisha mine in Eritrea. (Image: Bisha mine. Courtesy of Nevsun Resources.)

A Canadian mining company that is a majority owner in a mine in Eritrea may be sued for alleged abuses that occurred in that country, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday.

The Court’s ruling holds that corporations can be held liable in civil law for breaches of international law, and that the act of state doctrine is not a bar to the claim.

The decision stands to have implications for Canadian companies with operations abroad, notably in the resources, technology and armaments sectors. ...

“It’s important, because there are a number of corporate accountability lawsuits that are proceeding in Canadian courts right now,” says Cory Wanless of Waddell Phillips PC in Toronto, who was lead counsel for the intervener International Human Rights Program of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law before the Supreme Court.

In Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya, the majority of the court found that the norms of customary international law (which is, in essence, the common law of international law) raised by the Eritrean workers, who allege breaches of it in this case, form part of Canadian law. As a Canadian company, Nevsun Resources Ltd. is bound by Canadian law, and customary international law becomes part of Canadian law automatically, the majority found.

“If you breach customary international law, … states could be held liable under domestic law principles,” says Hassan Ahmad, a Doctor of Juridical Science candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law whose research focus is corporate human rights violations.

“What this case says is that we don't live in a world anymore that's just dominated by state-to-state interaction,” Ahmad says. “We live in a world where non-state actors – so, corporations in this case -- do commit violations that are so grave that they impinge on what's called peremptory norms.” Violations of these norms include crimes against humanity and torture.

“These are the grave human rights violations that the Court says that corporations can also be taken to account,” he says. “And what they can be liable for under Canadian law is to pay compensation to victims [who] allege that they have been treated unjustly by these corporations.”

Three Eritrean refugees brought a claim against the Nevsun Resources Ltd., a publicly-held British Columbia corporation. They alleged that through a chain of subsidiaries, Nevsun entered into a commercial venture with Eritrea for the development of a gold, copper and zinc mine in Eritrea, and that they were conscripted to work at the mine under Eritrea’s National Service Program, which all Eritreans must enter at the age of 18 for a period of 18 months, but which may be extended indefinitely.

The workers allege that they were forced to work in the Bisha mine, in which Nevsun has a majority stake, for 12 hours a day, six days a week, in temperatures close to 50 degrees Celsius and without cover. They sought damages from Nevsun for breaches of customary international law prohibitions against forced labour, slavery, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and crimes against humanity. They also sought damages for breaches of domestic torts including conversion, battery, unlawful confinement, conspiracy and negligence.

Nevsun brought a motion to strike the pleadings on the basis of the act of state doctrine, which precludes domestic courts from assessing the sovereign acts of a foreign government. The company also argued that the claims based on customary international law should be struck because they have no reasonable prospect of success. The chambers judge dismissed Nevsun’s motion to strike, and the Court of Appeal agreed.

In today’s judgment the majority of the Supreme Court dismissed Nevsun’s appeal, allowing the case to proceed before the courts in British Columbia. ...

“Ultimately, for the purposes of this appeal, it is enough to conclude that the breaches of customary international law, or jus cogens, relied on by the Eritrean workers may well apply to Nevsun,” Justice Abella continued. “The only remaining question is whether there are any Canadian laws which conflict with their adoption as part of our common law. I could not, with respect, find any.” ...

But a “big takeaway” from this decision “is that the Supreme Court showed a real willingness to take seriously international human rights law,” Wanless adds, and “a real willingness to engage in these novel questions of how international human rights law should be applied against corporations for breaches of international law.

“This court has gone further than any other court in recognizing that there could be a private cause of action for a corporation that participates in the violation of international human rights law,” he says, “and how Canadian courts should deal with those.”

For corporations doing business in a country such as Eritrea, “particularly if you’re partnering with the government” (Eritrea owns 40 per cent of the Bisha mine through state-owned companies), “then you’re entering into an extremely high-risk zone,” and a high level of diligence will need to be exercised “to ensure that you are not implicated in human rights abuses.”

“It’s a landmark, watershed moment in Canadian law,” says Ahmad, which “signifies the increasing globalization of our world, and how trade and commerce cross national frontiers. I think the law is finally catching up to that.”

https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/practice-areas/litigation/nevsun-can-b...

The following article discusses the global role of the Canadian mining industry, the destruction it has wrought around the world, and the fight by indigenous, environmental and NGO groups against this industry that resulted in the formation of Mining Watch Canada. Its url also includes a podcast interview with Joan Kuyek, who has fought the industry for decades and was the first national coordinator of Mining Watch Canada, as well as author of Unearthing Justice: How to Protect Your Community from the Mining Industry.

Mining is big business, especially in Canada. About half of the world's mining companies are headquartered here, which in 2017 amounted to 1,364 companies holding $260 billion in assets, and they work in more than 100 countries. An interview in the Halifax Examiner quoted today's guest as saying, "Mining -- the extraction of copper, gold, and other metals -- was one of the major reasons why Canada got settled in the first place. ... This was a colony that was there to extract. And our laws, our regulations, and policies are all shaped by facilitating extraction."

As past episodes of Talking Radical Radio have discussed over the years, the mining sector has an awful record when it comes to the environment and human rights. Profit-driven resource extraction is a constant threat to Indigenous peoples, sovereignty and rights. And in an era of climate crisis, it's relevant that more than a quarter of global climate emissions can be traced to mining -- and to be clear, traced not to fossil fuel extraction, but to extraction and primary processing of metals and other minerals. ...

Starting in the mid 1990s, people involved in three strands of struggle against Canadian mining companies started talking -- Indigenous groups within Canada, prominently including the Innu Nation and its fight against the proposed mine at Voisey's Bay in Labrador; environmental groups opposed to mining projects in British Columbia and elsewhere; and international NGOs that had run up against Canadian mining companies doing destructive things in a bunch of different countries. Together, they founded an organization called MiningWatch to act as a resource in all of these different kinds of struggles. And they hired Kuyek, who moved to Ottawa in 1999 to work as the organization's national co-ordinator. Since 2008, she has done similar work on a freelance basis.

https://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/talking-radical-radio/2020/04/how-prote...

First Nations in Quebec and Labrador are expressing deep concern over the movement of miners in and out of their communities bringing Covid-19 and possibly death to their communities. As the picture below, the industry of abandoning First Nations communities when financial, environmental and other problems arise. 

 

One of the many abandoned open pits from a previous era’s mining near Schefferville near Innu and Naskapi nations. Photo Credit: Arn Keeling

First Nations in Quebec and Labrador have raised concerns about the reopening of mining operations in Quebec, fearing that movement in and out of fly-in/fly-out camps will increase transmission of the novel coronavirus into their communities.

In a statement, Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador (AFNQL) Chief Ghislain Picard noted that many mines in the province are located on First Nations territories. First Nations leaders have taken measures to limit access to their communities, which to date, have produced “encouraging results with a relatively stable positive case rate” of COVID-19, reads the release.

“We judge that Quebec’s decision to allow the resumption of mining operations in a hurry is dangerously compromising the efforts made by our communities to slow the spread of the disease in the regions,” Picard said. “In this regard, the movement and comings and goings (fly-in/fly-out) of mining workers is of great concern. I would also like to reiterate that the pandemic does not exempt governments from their duty to consult.”

After ordering the closure of mines in the province on Mar. 24, Quebec Premier François Legault added mines to the list of essential businesses earlier this week, allowing mines to restart operations as of Apr. 15. The government mandated mines must operate under strict sanitation and physical distancing measures, and put in place measures to minimize movement in and out of fly-in/fly-out sites, such as lengthening crews rotations to 28 days (up from 14) and the reduction of flights in and out of sites to the bare minimum.

The AFNQL stressed the vulnerability of their communities, and noted concern about the message that may be received by mine reopenings. “Resuming activities must not mean a loosening of preventive measures,” reads the release.

“In the face of COVID-19, our leaders prioritize the health and safety of our members above everything else, even the economy,” Picard said.

The AFNQL represents 43 First Nations communities in Quebec and Labrador, representing 10 Nations: Abenaki, Algonquin, Atikamekw, Cree, Hurons-Wendat, Innu, Maliseet, Mi’gmaq, Mohawk, and Naskapi.

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/news/covid-19-first-nations-concern...

A just released report discusses how mining companies, are abusing and putting at risk the lives of indigenous and poor miners around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact ""Canada is home to almost 1,300 mining companies, constituting 75 percent of all the mining companies in the world" (https://globaljournalist.org/2013/10/when-canadian-mining-companies-take...) because of its lax laws governing mining, especially outside Canada and therefore the Trudeau government continues to be a major part of the problem in its failure to provide any significant regulation of the Canadian corporate mining and environmental abusers and killers.

In the Mining Watch Canada report entitled “Global Solidarity with Communities, Indigenous Peoples and Workers at risk from Mining Pandemic Profiteers”, the immediate threat of Covid-19 to the health and safety of communities and organizations that have been struggling to defend public health and their environments against the destruction and devastation of mining extractivism for decades is descibed. 

 

Voices from the Ground: How the Global Mining Industry is Profiting from the COVID-19 Pandemic

The mining industry is one of the most polluting, deadly, and destructive industries in the world. Yet to date, mining company responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have received little scrutiny compared to other industries seeking to profit from this crisis.  ...

Based on a collective analysis emerging from conversations with affected communities, workers, and civil society organizations, we have identified the following trends that exemplify this threat. A review of over 500 media sources, press releases, and reports on mining in the context of COVID-19 further informs these findings.

One: Mining companies are ignoring the real threats of the pandemic and continuing to operate, using any means available.

Mining companies and many governments have pushed to categorise mining as an essential service, enabling operations to continue despite substantial risk. In doing so, they have become key vectors for the spread of the virus and are putting communities, rural and urban populations, and their workforces, at great risk. In many cases, Indigenous and rural communities already face acute risk from the virus, especially communities whose health has been impacted by contamination generated by mining extractivism. They are struggling to protect themselves from potential outbreaks. 

Two: Governments around the world are taking extraordinary measures to shut down legitimate protests and promote the mining sector.

Free of public oversight and scrutiny, governments have imposed restrictions on people’s freedom of association and movement to protect public health. But these severe and even militarized measures compromise people’s ability to defend their territories and their lives. Land defenders face greater risk of targeted violence and some remain unjustly imprisoned, posing additional risks of infection. Governments have also deployed state forces (military and police) to repress legitimate, safe protests, especially in instances where there is long standing opposition to a company’s activities. In some instances, this has included the implementation of regulations or obstacles to access the justice system which entrench impunity. ...

Three: Mining companies are using the pandemic as an opportunity to whitewash their dirty track records and present themselves as public-minded saviours

At a time when entire countries are struggling to get the bare minimum of test kits necessary, companies have boasted about the millions of privately sourced test kits they have provided to affected communities and workers. This is poor cover for the long-term health impacts that regularly result from mining activities and the often underhanded ways in which these same firms operate. It also represents an affront to the greater public good and the collective efforts of many states and communities to secure public access to tests, highlighting the glaring asymmetries of power between multinational corporations and states in the Global South.  ...

Four: Mining companies and governments are using the crisis to secure regulatory change that favours the industry at the expense of people and planet.

While they frame mining as essential now and for global post-COVID-19 economic recovery, mining companies are lobbying to expedite administrative decisions and weaken the already-limited measures which do exist to address the social, cultural, environmental, and economic impacts of their activities that are almost always borne by affected communities with complete impunity. Whether explicitly, by suspending the little environmental oversight and enforcement there was, or implicitly, by making it more challenging for affected communities to get information and intervene in permitting processes, governments are making deep concessions to the mining industry – and companies are now lobbying governments to make such deregulation permanent.  

At the same time, companies are increasingly using supranational Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, embedded in thousands of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, to sue governments, especially in the Global South. They continue bringing or threatening suits in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars for decisions made by governments, courts and even human rights bodies, undermining national sovereignty to make decisions to protect public health and attacking the self-determination of people fighting to protect their wellbeing from extractive projects. ...

We call on national governments to respect and support the autonomous organizing and self- determining processes of mining-affected communities and Indigenous peoples. Their efforts are vital to protecting community health and the environment, informed by their own knowledge and traditions, as well as to the food sovereignty of rural and urban populations through small-scale agriculture and other productive activities. Economic “reactivation” must not promote more mining, but should, instead, acknowledge and bolster community-based initiatives.

We call on international human rights bodies to pay close attention and actively condemn human rights violations committed by governments and mining corporations during the pandemic and the recovery period to follow. 

https://miningwatch.ca/sites/default/files/global_solidarity_statement_o...

Another example of the murder of local anti-mining activists by a Canadian mining company was the murder of anti-mineing activist Mariano Abarca  in Mexico in a case involving corruption that resulted in a RCMP investigation. The Canadian embassy supported the mining operation, denied any involvement in the investigation, refused to release a report on the investigation until a freedom of information request forced the release of a highly redacted document. 

Documents released from the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) under an access to information request raise serious concerns about the conduct of the Canadian Embassy in Mexico. Throughout a conflict involving Blackfire Exploration’s mining activities in the municipality of Chicomuselo, Chiapas that saw an activist shot and ultimately triggered a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) investigation over corruption, it appears the Embassy provided instrumental and uncon- scionable support to the operations of a Canadian mining company in Mexico.

Blackfire Exploration is a small, privately held, Calgary-based company that obtained mining concessions in Chiapas, Mexico in 2005. In 2008, its Payback mine began to produce barite, a mineral used for drilling petroleum wells. The mine operated for approximately two years before being closed by Mexican authori- ties for violating environmental regulations. Two much more serious scandals involving the mine bracket- ed its suspension: a week earlier on November 27, 2009, local anti-mining activist Mariano Abarca was murdered; and days later, allegations that the company was involved in the corruption of a local mayor surfaced in the Canadian news media. 

In March 2010, United Steelworkers, Common Frontiers, and MiningWatch Canada carried out a fact- finding mission to Chiapas at the invitation of the Mexican Network of Mine Affected Communities (REMA, by its initials in Spanish). The delegation looked into the impacts of Blackfire’s Payback mine in the town of Chicomuselo, where murdered activist and father of four Mariano Abarca lived, and in the outlying communities of Ejidoi Grecia and Ejido Nueva Morelia, where the mine was located. It produced a report in early 2010.

As part of its research, the delegation met with the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City. Although the Em- bassy repeatedly denied any involvement in the investigation of Abarca’s murder, the delegation knew that an Embassy Political Counsellor had travelled to Chiapas two months after Abarca’s death. The delegation requested a copy of the report from this trip, but the Counsellor refused to provide it. Several months later, the organizations filed an access to information request, and after 19 months DFAIT released Embassy documents dealing with Blackfire. The release consisted of more than 900 pages of sometimes heavily redacted emails, briefings, and other files dated from November 2007 to May 2010, spanning a period from before Blackfire’s mine was operating until six months after Abarca was killed.

Overall, the released documents suggest that in the case of Blackfire, the Embassy provided virtually un- conditional support in spite of the company’s behaviour and the Embassy’s awareness of the tensions around the mine site. The documents also establish that Mariano Abarca was known to the Embassy be- fore he was murdered. In July 2009, Mariano delivered a speech outside the Embassy in Mexico City, and in August 2009 the Embassy reported receiving 1,400 letters about Abarca following his arrest and deten- tion based on a complaint filed by a Blackfire representative in Mexico. Even after Abarca had been killed, the mine had been suspended, and corruption allegations had surfaced, the Embassy continued to defend the company to Mexican state officials and provided it with information on how to sue the state of Chiapas under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for closing the mine.  ...

An analysis of the DFAIT documents and ancillary materials supports the following conclusions. First, the Embassy’s active and unquestioning support may have acted as a disincentive for Blackfire to comply with local and international laws. Second, in doing so, the Embassy failed to uphold Canada’s own poli- cies, as well as its international obligation to promote universal respect for human rights.

The picture pieced together is tremendously unsettling, especially given Canada’s role as a top investor in Mexico’s mining industry. Approximately 75% of the world’s mining companies are headquartered in Canada, and many of these companies are associated with serious conflict. In 2011, Canada’s Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Counsellor reported that 204 of 269 foreign- owned companies in Mexico’s mining sector in 2010 were Canadian.

Canada’s prominent role in Mexico’s mining sector, and our findings in this case, lead us to make several recommendations, some of which are:

• That Canada create robust eligibility criteria for all government supports to mining companies, includ- ing ensuring respect for the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous communities and for bind- ing democratic and participatory decision-making processes of non-Indigenous communities before mine prospecting and project development begins;

• That Canada pass legislation to regulate Canadian mining companies operating abroad and provide affected communities with access to Canadian courts and an independent ombudsperson;

• That Canada’s anti-corruption legislation be significantly strengthened and greater resources directed towards its enforcement;

• That Canada instruct its embassies abroad to carefully assess the impacts of Canadian mining opera- tions on affected communities to ensure that commercial interests never outweigh collective and indi- vidual human rights;

• That Blackfire Exploration Ltd. renounce any future attempt to reopen the Payback mine in Chico- muselo, or open any other new mines in the state of Chiapas. 

https://miningwatch.ca/sites/default/files/blackfire_embassy_report-web.pdf

In a report released in the last week of July, Global Witness identified a record number of land and environmental activists totalling more than 200 who were murdered last year.

"Canada is home to almost 1,300 mining companies, constituting 75 percent of all the mining companies in the world. Non-profit advocacy organization Mining Watch Canada has been monitoring Canadian mining companies' global actions since its founding in 1999." (https://globaljournalist.org/2013/10/when-canadian-mining-companies-take...)

A MINING FACILITY IN CHIAPAS, MEXICO OWNED BY CALGARY-BASED COMPANY, BLACKFIRE EXPLORATION, LTD. IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA. 

An employee of a Canadian-owned gold mine in Cocula, Mexico is among two people still missing days after local police freed ten others said to be victims of a kidnapping. The group was travelling in an SUV about 30 minutes outside of Coculaon Friday when kidnappers dressed as police or military personnel abducted them. 

Global Witness today revealed the highest number of land and environmental defenders murdered on record in a single year, with 212 people killed in 2019 for peacefully defending their homes and standing up to the destruction of nature.

The NGO’s annual report also shed a light on the urgent role land and environmental defenders play in fighting climate breakdown, opposing carbon intensive and unsustainable industries that are accelerating global warming and environmental damage. It points to how, under increased crackdown and surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the protection of these activists is all the more vital for rebuilding a safer and greener planet.

On average, four defenders have been killed every week since the creation of the Paris Climate agreement in December 2015. Countless more are silenced by violent attacks, arrests, death threats or lawsuits. 

Shockingly, over half of all reported killings last year occurred in just two countries: Colombia (peaking at 64) and the Philippines (rising from 30 in 2018 to 43 in 2019). Globally, the true number of killings was likely much higher, as cases often go undocumented.

These killings include the murder of Datu Kaylo Bontolan, murdered in the Philippines after opposing illegal mining in the area. A Manobo leader, he was one of many indigenous people killed in 2019, asserting their right to self-determination and protecting their ancestral lands from those looking to exploit their natural resources.

Mining was the deadliest sector globally with 50 defenders killed in 2019, with agribusiness remaining a threat, particularly in Asia – where 80% of agribusiness-related attacks took place.

There have also been increasing threats and attacks in Romania, including the killing of Liviu Pop. A ranger working to protect one of Europe’s largest, primeval climate-critical forests, Liviu was shot and killed after protecting trees in a country where organised criminal gangs are decimating these forests.

Activists still campaigning and under threat include Angelica Ortiz, one of the prominent Wayuu women defenders from La Guajira, who for years has opposed the largest coal mine in Latin America, as part of efforts to protect water rights for communities living in one of Colombia’s poorest regions. Throughout this campaign, she was threatened and harassed. ...

“Agribusiness and oil, gas and mining have been consistently the biggest drivers of attacks against land and environmental defenders – and they are also the industries pushing us further into runaway climate change through deforestation and increasing carbon emissions. 

“Many of the world’s worst environmental and human rights abuses are driven by the exploitation of natural resources and corruption in the global political and economic system. Land and environmental defenders are the people who take a stand against this. 

“If we really want to make plans for a green recovery that puts the safety, health and well-being of people at its heart, we must tackle the root causes of attacks on defenders, and follow their lead in protecting the environment and halting climate breakdown.”  ...

Key stats: 

• Over half of those killed were from mining-affected communities in Latin America. The Philippines was the country with most mining-related deaths, with 16 people killed.
• Logging was the sector with the highest increase in killings globally since 2018, with 85% more attacks recorded against defenders opposing the industry.
• Over two thirds of killings took place in Latin America, which has been consistently ranked the worst affected continent since Global Witness began to publish data in 2012.
• Asia has consistently been one of the worst regions for attacks related to agribusiness - a long-time driver of attacks against defenders. In 2019, over 85% of agribusiness related attacks recorded were in Asia. Of these, almost 90% of these were documented in the Philippines. 

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/global-witness-records-t...

No mined material has caused more deaths than asbestos. " Asbestos causes an estimated 255,000 deaths (243,223–260,029) annually according to latest knowledge, of which work-related exposures are responsible for 233,000 deaths (222,322–242,802)." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5982039/)

Quebec Asbestos mine

"Canada’s past dedication to the mining of chrysotile asbestos and its track record of permitting the production and use of asbestos in thousands of products laid the groundwork for exposing its citizens. ...

Vancouver’s shipyards exposed many Canadians, and Quebec is home to many of Canada’s early asbestos mines. ... 

Since 1996, asbestos-related disease has accounted for around a third of workplace deaths in Canada."

https://www.asbestos.com/mesothelioma/canada/

Canada's asbestos mines also became exporters of asbestos-related death. 

Effects of asbestosis

An unknown number of deaths abroad are attributable to Canadian exports. As of 2009, Canada was the world’s fifth-largest producer of asbestos, after Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Brazil.

Canada’s position that asbestos can be used safely ignored the reality of its key markets, like India, where asbestos tiles, cut by hand, are a common building material, and safety regulations are little-known. Canada sent almost 70,000 tonnes of asbestos to India in 2010, worth $40-million.

Canada’s last export of raw asbestos was in November, 2011, after the Quebec mines shut down. But Canada continues to export products, such as building materials, that contain asbestos.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/no-safe-use-as-the-to...

The following article discusses Canada's role through its mining companies in the extrajudicial attacks under the Duterte regime. Let me assure you that this has not just happened under Duterte but has been going on for decades. On my first trip to the Philippines in 1988 when I met my wife, I also met a representative from the Australian union movement that had sent him to the Philippines to try to help Filipino unions suffering from human rights abuses and murders. When I asked him how his six months in the country had went, he replied "It's been a success. They only murdered six union leaders while I've been here".

MiningWatch Canada and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP-Canada) have launched an electronic Parliamentary Petition in response to increasing extrajudicial attacks on civilians and human rights defenders in the Philippines since 2016.

“The Philippines is now one of the two most dangerous countries for those who defend human and environmental rights according to Global Witness,” says Patricia Lisson of ICHRP-Canada, adding that “this year the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ report on the Philippines found serious human rights violations, reinforced by harmful rhetoric from high-level officials against, among others, human rights organizations, lawyers, political and judicial actors, journalists, trade unionists, and religious groups.”

Canada is implicated in these rights abuses, both through the role Canadian mining companies play in the country and through Canada’s military aid to the Philippines.

Canadian OceanaGold’s copper-gold project in the village of Didipio, Nueva Vizcaya, has long been accused of serious human rights and environmental abuses. “In 2018, local indigenous people, who have peacefully opposed the mine for years, were falsely accused of sedition against the state, making them targets for extrajudicial killings, which have become so common in the Philippines,” says Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch Canada, “and then this year a large police force violently dispersed a peaceful and authorized blockade of a road to the mine, even though the mine has been without a permit to operate since June of 2019.”

Even as the human rights situation in the Philippines has steadily deteriorated, Canada has continued to provide military aid to the country. “Given the grave human rights situation in the Philippines Canada should not be selling the country military equipment and providing defense cooperation,” says Patricia Lisson of ICHRP-Canada, “Canada should add the Philippines to its list of countries to which it will not export military goods and technology.”

Canada falls short in protecting Philippine human rights defenders both at the consular level in the Philippines and through its corporate accountability mechanisms at home. “When some of the people who were falsely accused, and faced a real threat of extrajudicial killing because of their opposition to OceanaGold, sought assistance from the Canadian embassy in Manila their requests for help were not met,” says Catherine Coumans, “and at the same time we still do not have an Ombudsperson in Canada who has the investigatory powers to compel witnesses and documents that are necessary to address complaints against Canadian mining companies.

The electronic Parliamentary Petition addresses these concerns raised by MiningWatch Canada and ICHRP-Canada.

For more information contact: 

• Catherine Coumans, MiningWatch Canada, [email protected]
• Patricia Lisson, International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines-Canada, [email protected]

https://miningwatch.ca/news/2020/9/22/parliamentary-petition-deteriorati...