Arriving in Cerro de San Pedro is like taking a step back in time. The original framework of the town remains semi-intact, with winding cobblestone streets and houses nestled into the sides of the hills.

The surrounding desert landscape is a tranquil setting for the small shops and restaurants operated by local entrepreneurs.

But beneath this quiet veneer lies a story of conflict — evident in the missing face of the namesake cerro (hill) of San Pedro, now vacantly overlooking the town.

Prior to my arrival in Cerro de San Pedro, I knew little of the town where a Canadian company had constructed an open-pit mine, Minera San Xavier, a stone’s throw away from the historic townsite and relocated the neighbouring hamlet of La Zapatilla to make room for the mine’s processing facilities.

But beyond the visible impact of the Cerro de San Pedro mine were rumours of sickness that locals were hesitant to speak of, the story of a lawyer opposed to the mine who was forced to flee Mexico to claim refugee status in Canada and the grim reality of a municipal president who, after pushing back against mine permits, was found dead with a bullet in his head.

Cerro de San Pedro is one of the oldest historical mine sites in Mexico.  Here the mine, owned by New Gold and operated by Minera San Xavier, works its way across the hill from which Cerro de San Pedro draws its name. It is believed that the Guachichil Indigenous people led the Spaniards to gold here in 1592.

The mine and the promise

Two years after the ratification of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) opened Mexico’s borders to increased international investment in 1994, Metallica Resources announced its plans to construct what it claimed would be one of the greatest open-pit gold and silver mines in the world. It was one of the first instances of a Canadian mining company taking advantage of the investment opportunities presented by NAFTA and the mining reforms of the 1990s.

The new mine proposal was met with a mixture of apprehension, anticipation and opposition by the residents of Cerro de San Pedro and the nearby state capital of San Luis Potosí.

Cerro de San Pedro is one of the oldest mine sites in Mexico, and the townsite serves as a living museum for the historical mining heritage of San Luis Potosí. The hills surrounding Cerro de San Pedro bear witness to centuries of subterranean mining activity as various companies passed through the town.

While the mine brought promise of renewed economic development to the historical-yet-dying mining town, there were also concerns over the use of cyanide at its processing facility and requirements for large amounts of water in a water-scarce region.

A man drives through La Nueava [the new] La Zapatilla. La Zapatilla is only four kilometres from Cerro de San Pedro and sits at the base of the mines’ processing facilities. The original townsite was relocated to make room for the enormous heap-leach pile.

Birthday Party, La Zapatilla.

The plan included the use of a heap-leaching method to extract gold and silver from ore extracted from an open pit. After blasting the hill, large amounts of rock containing tiny particles of gold and silver were transported by truck and piled onto a leach pad. This heap of material was then irrigated with a cyanide solution that leaches minerals, creating a heavy sludge. Recovered minerals are then smelted into gold and silver bars known as doré, which are shipped elsewhere for further refining. The relatively new method of mining was a significant departure from the more familiar subterranean mining near Cerro de San Pedro, which traditionally required tunnels built into well-established mineral deposits.

The project catapulted the tight knit community deep into social conflict between those who were opposed to the mine destroying the symbolic hill of Cerro de San Pedro, and those who saw it as an economic opportunity.

The backside of the mine in Cerro de San Pedro.

Blasting for the mine occurred at 3 p.m. daily and took its toll on many of the historical buildings in Cerro de San Pedro. The company says it is making efforts to restore damage as a result of the blasting.

A young boy dances with a wire frame in the shape of a bull and fixed with fireworks. This is a common scene as the night wears on at many a festival. Different people take turns dancing with the bull as the fireworks go off.

The resistance

When community members from Cerro de San Pedro began to voice opposition to the mine, it wasn’t long before academics, professionals, lawyers and ecologists from the state capital took note. 

A movement known as the Frente Amplio Opositor, the Broad Opposition Front, emerged to fight the permits issued to the mine at both the state and federal levels. Successive court battles and legal challenges successfully stalled the mine, for a time.

But by 2007, all legal options were exhausted. Rulings were overturned or unenforced and the mine commenced operations under the new ownership of New Gold and amid tangible civil unrest.

There are still unanswered questions about how Metallica Resources originally acquired land from the municipality and surrounding ejidos, communally owned farming collectives.

New Gold employee Fausto Muniz at the taller de platería [silversmith’s workshop] in Cerro de San Pedro, owned by New Gold.

Pelea de Gallos (cock fight) in La Zapatilla. While cock fighting is illegal in Mexico, it is often overlooked in small places like La Zapatilla.

Portraits of municipal presidents Oscar Loredo (left) and his father Baltazar Loredo (right) hang in the municipal office in Cerro de San Pedro. Baltazar pushed back on issuing the municipal permits for the mine and was found with a bullet in his head. His death speaks to the tensions in the community that were fuelled by what certain individuals stood to gain or lose with the mine’s approval. During his own time as municipal president, Oscar received a personal directive from then-president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, to issue the permits for the mine. He says he didn’t feel like he could say no.

The town of Cerro de San Pedro sits only a few hundred metres from the open pit of the mine. The original plans for the mine included relocating the town of Cerro de San Pedro to mine the gold beneath it. The company abandoned this plan in the face of strong opposition from the community.

Canadian mines abroad

Canada is home to 75 per cent of the world’s mining companies. According to the Canadian Mining Association, Canadian mining companies operate in more than 100 countries around the globe. Natural Resources Canada reported that in 2015, the value of Canadian mining assets abroad reached $170.8 billion.

An estimated $20 billion of taxpayer support flows through Export Development Canada to the industry each year, by way of subsidized financing and insurance backing for Canadian firms operating abroad. 

But in recent years, there has been growing attention paid to the way Canadian mining companies operate abroad and whether or not these companies are being held to a Canadian standard when it comes to respecting human rights and the environment. A 2017 B.C. court ruling means Canadian mining companies will now have to face human rights charges in Canadian courts.

Previously, these kinds of cases related to human rights violations were dismissed by the Canadian courts which argued they should be heard in their countries of origin.

A 2015 discussion paper by the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and MiningWatch Canada found 32 per cent of Canadian mining companies were involved in conflicts overseas. A report from the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project found that between 2000 and 2015 there were 44 deaths, more than 400 people injured and more than 700 cases of criminalization in connection to 28 Canadian mining companies operating in 13 different countries across Latin America.

A new subdivision on the edge of the state capital San Luis Potosi. While the capital is growing and has well-off districts, there is little focus on satellite communities like Cerro de San Pedro. Mining companies are often left to provide communities with what they are lacking in government services such as health care, education, roads, water and electricity as has been the case in Cerro de San Pedro.

Three cases are currently making their way through Canadian courts against Tahoe Resources, Hudbay Minerals and Nevsun Resources.

In response to growing concern about the behaviour of Canadian-based mining companies, in early 2018 the Liberal government announced an independent ombudsperson would be established to resolve conflicts between Canadian companies and local communities overseas.

The office of the ombudsperson, which would have the mandate to investigate human rights abuses and withhold governmental support, has yet to be filled.

Beyond for or against mines

The Canadian-owned New Gold Inc. is now the sole owner of the Mexican subsidiary Minera San Xavier, which it purchased from Metallica Resources in 2007 — the same year the mine went into operations.

I met with Marc Dávila Harris, the former director of sustainable development for New Gold, in Cerro de San Pedro. He said the main mistake of the previous owner was creating division in the community.

As a social and cultural anthropologist, Dávila said there are bigger questions at stake in communities amid resource extraction — questions that go beyond being simply for or against mines. He said he’s trying to understand “why we love all the ultimate things in our comfortable lives, but we are against the activities that create part of those benefits for our way of living.”

“The conversation is completely sterile,” Dávila said, “if we think that mining is good or bad.”

The debate ought to centre on how mining companies are interacting with communities and with the environment.

“Are those companies following the best practices? Are those companies working together [to try and] share their benefits with the local communities, with the society, with the employees? And are those mining activities preventing conflicts?”

A health nurse examines a young girl at the medical clinic built by New Gold in Monte Caldera, another town in Cerro de San Pedro.

Ernestina Alvarado’s son-in-law, Adrián Orta Rosas, fixes the TV cable on his house in the new La Zapatilla.

Ernestina Alvarado Castillo in the home built by the mine for her mother after the town of La Zapatilla was relocated. Both Castillo and her husband work for the mine. She longs for the old La Zapatilla, but also relies on the employment from the mine. She tells me that it would be very difficult for them to find work elsewhere because neither of them were able to complete their education. She’s worried about what the future holds for them once the mine closes.

Aristeo Gutiérrez Chávez at his store in Cerro de San Pedro. Gutiérrez was one of the most vocal supporters of the mine during the time the Frente Amplio Opositor was fighting against it. Gutiérrez was born in Cerro de San Pedro and started working in the mines at a young age. For Gutiérrez, the Frente Amplio Opositor consisted mostly of people who weren’t from Cerro de San Pedro and who didn’t have the right to be standing between the mine and the benefits it could bring to the town.

New Gold holds an impressive list of industry accolades for its leadership in social responsibility both in Canada and Mexico. But these awards, critics are quick to point out, aren’t granted in response to government regulated or legislated guidelines but are instead issued by corporate bodies.

This had led many advocates of mining reform to argue Canada urgently needs an independent body or ombudsperson to oversee these companies and act as a watchdog for their activities abroad.

In a submission made to the Supreme Court of Canada for a human-rights case brought against Nevsun and its operations in Eritrea, MiningWatch Canada argued that Canadian common law needs to recognize the “realities of the globalized economy” and that “transnational companies often operate where [democratic and regulatory] institutions are weak.”

A Canadian mine in Mexico, a Mexican refugee in Canada

Enrique Rivera Sierra — a fiery, outspoken lawyer in his early thirties at the time the Frente Amplio Opositor emerged — was a central opponent of the mine, helping organize demonstrations and raising awareness about the environmental impacts of the mine in both Mexico and Canada.

Between 2007 and 2012 Rivera lived in Canada as a political refugee.

During Semana Santa, Easter week, in 2006, Rivera and his now-wife Lorena Gil Barba were handing out information about the mine in Cerro de San Pedro when they were attacked by two men who allegedly worked for the mine. Rivera sustained head injuries, which were documented by a photographer working for the local newspaper.

Yet the violent attack didn’t amount to any response from police. Rivera said tensions continued to escalate. When he learned of the local authorities’ plans to have him arrested, he was forced to go into hiding at the house of a family member.

Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, a professor in Latin American and environmental studies at McGill University, established a research group called “investigating Canadian mining in Latin America” in 2007 and was familiar with Rivera’s plight. At the professor’s urging, Rivera decided to flee to Canada.

“I didn’t even know where Montreal was on a map,” he told me. He received refugee status in Canada in 2010 after a hearing found there was “a reasonable possibility that [Rivera] would be persecuted were he to return to Mexico today and in the future … the state, both at the state and federal levels, has been the persecuting agent.”

After change in government, Rivera and his family now live once again in Mexico, in the state capital of San Luis Potosí.

Lorena Gil Barba and Enrique Rivera Sierra, who were both active in the protests against the mine, with their two children, Andrés and Samuel, at home in the state capital. Rivera fled Mexico in 2007 after learning the Mexican authorities planned to arrest him. He received refugee status in Canada in 2010. After marrying in Montreal, the couple decided to return to Mexico to start a family. A new state government had been elected and the opposition movement against the mine had dissipated.

The end of the mine

Rivera is skeptical of how far additional regulatory oversight in Canada can go. He’s hopeful that the change in state and federal governments will address the corruption in Mexican politics, which he believes is at the root of the conflict around mines.

Researchers have documented a tension between the interests of foreign mining companies and domestic governments tasked with enforcing local laws. An article published by the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal highlights the “economic benefits of foreign extractive options tend to overshadow home governments’ desire to enforce stringent regulations and standards.”

Professor Ann Helwege, researcher of mining in Latin America at the University of Boston, suggests in an article that there is a “sense that Canadian mining firms act with impunity” in Latin America. But, she adds, “the real work must be done in Latin America” to address the environmental risks of mining, protect the interests of local communities and reduce mining conflict.

Mexico’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, gives a speech at a MORENA rally in San Luis Potosí during his campaign for the federal election in 2017. A promise to tackle corruption in the Mexican government was one of his key campaign messages.

Un cerro [a hill] in the dry region of Cerro de San Pedro.

The family alter in a home in La Zapatilla.

Beatriz Adriana Loredo Rivera and Verónica Loredo Rivera — nieces of murdered municipal president and mine opponent Baltazar Loredo — holding the Virgin of Fatima during the Festival of Encino in Cerro de San Pedro.

Twenty years after exploration first began, the company has completely mined out the cerro of San Pedro and the operation has moved into its closure phase. Ironically, the conflict around the mine has helped put the town on the map and it has since become a popular weekend destination. Much of New Gold’s focus in its closure phase has focused on supporting businesses in Cerro de San Pedro to capitalize on this tourism potential.

Still, many residents from Cerro de San Pedro and the surrounding communities who have been dependent on the mining industry since the town’s inception are left with questions of what is to come. Opponents, jaded by the actions of both the Canadian and Mexican governments, continue to dispute the legitimacy of the mine’s existence to this day.

Even without the emblematic hill, Cerro de San Pedro will remain even after the mine has come and gone. It belongs to the people who continue to make this place their home.

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In April 2013, a group of Guatemalan farmers, among them Adolpho Augustin Garcia, converged outside the front entrance of Vancouver-based Tahoe Resources’ Escobal mine. Located in southeast Guatemala near the community of San Rafael Las Flores and operated by Tahoe subsidiary Minera San Rafael, the mine was already controversial even though it hadn’t yet begun production.

Garcia and fellow protesters faced off against private security personnel working for Alfa Uno, the firm that Minera San Rafael had contracted to guard Escobal, which went on to become one of the world’s largest silver mines, producing a world record 21.2 million ounces of silver concentrate in 2016. Lucrative as it potentially was, the mine was plagued by protests by the local Indigenous Xinca, small-scale farmers and community leaders, many of whom fear its impact on water and land.

That day, under the orders of the head of security, a Peruvian named Alberto Rotondo, personnel guarding the mine allegedly fired on protesters with rubber bullets as they fled the entrance. Seven were injured.

Six years later, this skirmish is reverberating throughout the Canadian mining industry and has the attention of the country’s legal system.

A case for which court?

In June 2014, seven Guatemalan plaintiffs, including Garcia, launched a civil suit against Tahoe Resources in B.C. Supreme Court, alleging negligence and battery at the hands of Escobal mine security. Then in November 2015, Justice Laura Gerow ruled that a Canadian court didn’t have jurisdiction, agreeing with Tahoe that the case should be heard in Guatemala.

However, the plaintiffs appealed a year later, and in 2017 the B.C. court of appeal overturned Gerow’s decision, supporting the argument that the Guatemalans likely wouldn’t get a fair trial in their own country.

(Guatemala ranked 96th out of 113 countries in the 2017-18 Rule of Law Index published by the independent World Justice Project, compared to No. 9 for Canada.)

Tahoe asked the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal, but the request was denied that June. Garcia vs. Tahoe had cleared its final legal hurdle, and this potentially game-changing case is set to proceed in a Vancouver courtroom. (In February 2019, another Vancouver-based company, Pan American Silver, completed its acquisition of Tahoe Resources for roughly $1 billion.)

It’s a shot across the bow of corporate Canada, warning companies that when it comes to overseas operations, they can no longer pawn off responsibility for human rights violations to in-country subsidiaries.

It also marks a legal milestone: the first time a Canadian court has agreed to allow foreign plaintiffs to seek justice in Canadian courts for incidents alleged to have occurred abroad.

Joe Fiorante, a partner at Vancouver law firm Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman, represents the seven plaintiffs, three of whom settled out of court with Tahoe.

“In terms of setting precedent, it is very important for there to be a public trial,” Fiorante says. “Our goal is to make the parent company responsible at the highest level,” he adds.

“If a board of directors knows that it will be responsible for the conduct of its subsidiaries abroad, that will have a profound impact on corporate responsibility.”

As of May 2019, no trial date had been set.

From whence you came

In the past, Canadian companies have mounted successful appeals in similar cases by arguing a common-law doctrine known as forum non conveniens, whereby courts may refuse to take jurisdiction over matters where a more appropriate forum is available.

The result: lawsuits filed in Canada by foreign plaintiffs alleging wrongdoings by Canadian companies have been dismissed and sent back to languish or die a quick death in the plaintiffs’ home countries.

But this line of defence is showing cracks.

Canada is the undisputed powerhouse of the mining industry, home to 75 per cent of its companies. Figures from the Mining Association of Canada show that Canadian investment in mining abroad more than tripled between 1999 and 2016.

But with the clout of being the global leader in mining and mining technology sometimes comes uncomfortable scrutiny, especially when Canadian players build operations in countries where the rule of law is weak, democracy fragile, respect for human rights tenuous, corruption rampant and accountability non-existent.

Allegations of modern slavery against Vancouver-based Nevsun Resources

Tahoe isn’t the only B.C. mining company facing a possibly ugly public trial.

In 2014, three Eritrean men filed a suit in B.C. Supreme Court alleging that they were subjected to abusive labour practices by a state-run contractor engaged by Vancouver-headquartered Nevsun Resources for the construction of its Bisha mine in Eritrea, on the Red Sea in Northeast Africa. The original three plaintiffs have since been joined by more than a dozen other former Bisha employees, and this mass tort claim over allegations of modern slavery is another ignominious first for Canada’s mining sector.

Unlike with Tahoe, the Supreme Court allowed Nevsun to appeal a lower court’s decision allowing the case to proceed. This past January, the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments from both sides, with Nevsun asking for the case to be sent back to Eritrea. While the plaintiffs and defendant await a decision from Canada’s top court, debate continues outside the courtroom.

Amanda Ghahremani, former acting legal director of the Canadian Centre for International Justice and a legal consultant specializing in international law and redress for victims of atrocity crimes , believes it would be hard for the company to successfully argue that Eritrea is an appropriate venue for the plaintiffs to seek justice.

The country of five million, which fought a protracted war of independence with Ethiopia that ended in 2000, is a de facto one-party state with a dismal human rights record that “continues unabated,” according to a 2018 report by United Nations special rapporteur Sheila Keetharuth.

“I hope Canadian mining companies are paying attention to these court cases. They should be,” Ghahremani says. “It’s important for them to understand that they cannot go into foreign countries and commit human rights violations and not be held responsible.”

Ontario court hears gang rape case at Guatemalan mine

Industry executives are likely paying close attention to a third lawsuit involving another Canadian company, Hudbay Minerals, that is winding through the Ontario courts.

The company chose not to pursue an appeal of this suit, filed in 2011 by 11 Indigenous Mayan women in Superior Court of Ontario alleging gang rape by security personnel at Fenix Mine in eastern in Guatemala back in 2007. The incident is alleged to have occurred before Hudbay acquired the property from Skye Resources in 2008 and the Toronto-based company has since divested its interest in this property.

The nickel processing plant for the Fenix mine in Guatemala, owned by Hudbay Minerals. The company is facing charges in an Ontario court related to the alleged gang rape of 11 Mayan women. This photo is a stitched panorama of three separate, horizontal frames. Photo: Roger Lemoyne

Scott Brubacher, director of corporate communications for Hudbay Minerals, said that the court case was at a standstill as of spring 2019. According to Brubacher, confusion around mine ownership at the time of the alleged crimes and misreporting in the media has put Hudbay in a difficult position.

Not surprisingly, many Canadian law firms with mining industry clients are also closely following these courtroom developments.

In a February 2017 blog post, Vancouver-based McCarthy Tetrault called Garcia vs. Tahoe “significant for both Canadian resource companies operating abroad and for foreign individuals alleging that Canadian parent companies are responsible for wrongs committed in the complainants’ home country.”

A reputation as good as gold

Though none have been proven in court, allegations of rape, slavery and shooting protestors with rubber bullets don’t burnish the image of the Canadian mining industry, especially when it’s trying to earn social licence for mines in countries that often present complicated social, economic, political and environmental challenges.

However, mining investment can be a powerful trigger for positive change, says one of B.C.’s biggest industry boosters.

Mark O’Dea is a Newfoundland-raised geologist and mining entrepreneur who sold publicly traded Fronteer Gold to U.S. titan Newmont Mining Corp. for CAD$2.3 billion in 2011. He’s also a winner of the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia’s Murray Pezim Award for perseverance and success in financing mineral exploration. O’Dea is no stranger to launching mining ventures abroad. As founder and chair of Vancouver-based investment firm Oxygen Capital Corp., he has interests in projects in Ontario, Nevada, Turkey and the West African nation of Burkina Faso.

Although O’Dea wouldn’t comment on Tahoe and Nevsun’s legal troubles, he thinks negative stories involving Canadian mining companies overshadow the economic good that mines bring to developing nations. He points to Karma, a gold mine in Burkina Faso that he developed through one of his companies, True Gold Mining.

O’Dea says the USD$130-million project brought opportunities to a region of the country that was previously without industry and “desolate,” though it also ran into protests from local populations that briefly suspended its construction in 2015.

“Over several years we created 1,000 jobs, with spinoffs to local business, and we damned a seasonal river to provide year-round water,” O’Dea says. “That’s a lasting benefit; that’s long-term.”

The mining sector does a poor job of telling its own good news story, he adds.

Tahoe mining licence suspended, blockades continue

Though Tahoe didn’t respond to interview requests, the company’s story in Guatemala is much more nuanced than you’d gather from sordid tales of security forces firing indiscriminately on protestors. Many local Guatemalans, both mine workers and business owners, support Escobal. Yet the project remains mired in controversy, and efforts by mine managers and Guatemalan government officials to suppress local dissent are well documented.

While Tahoe was preparing to defend itself in B.C. Supreme Court this past summer, troubles continued to mount at its Guatemalan silver mine.

In July, Escobal protester Ángel Estuardo Quevedo was murdered, and the perpetrators haven’t been identified.

Protesters in the community of Casillas, near the Escobal mine — one of the world’s largest silver mines — pray for calm amid rumours the army is on its way to evict their anti-mining roadblock. Mine owner, Vancouver-based Tahoe Resources, faces charges in Canada related to violent clashes with protesters in Guatemala. Photo: Nina Lakhani

Earlier in 2018, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala suspended Tahoe’s mining licence, asking for a third-party review of both Escobal’s environmental impact study, along with the Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines’ consultation process that resulted in its permitting in 2013.

The mine, which has been shut since mid-2017, remains the target of blockades, as well as protests 40 kilometres away in the nation’s capital, Guatemala City.

Lawyer Fiorante, whose connection to Guatemala dates back to travels there in the early 1990s, when the country was still crippled by civil war, says he’s “open to discussions about the benefits of mining.” (He now serves as volunteer legal counsel for Project Somos, a Vancouver charity that helps orphaned Guatemalan children.) “But in countries like Eritrea and Guatemala where there is so much corruption, I don’t think you can have any assurance that these benefits will trickle down to local people.”

Canada’s missing ombudsperson

Compared to the developing world, Canada has relatively stringent mine assessment and permitting procedures — so stringent that Oxygen Capital’s O’Dea says it’s become difficult to develop projects on his home turf in a reasonable time frame.

(Still, there are problems on home turf, too, with taxpayers shouldering the burden for abandoned mines like the Giant Mine in Yellowknife and a massive 2014 tailings dam failure at the Mount Polley mine resulting in 25 billion litres of contaminated materials entering Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water and major spawning grounds for sockeye salmon.)

When a Canadian company makes a foreign play, especially in jurisdictions where democratic institutions are brittle, it takes a next-level commitment to corporate responsibility and oversight to ensure that the project meets Canadian standards. Factor in local contractors that may be accustomed to playing by a different set of ethical and legal rules, and events can quickly spiral out of control.

That’s a big reason why in January 2018, the federal government announced $6.8 million in funding over six years for the creation of CORE, the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise, tasked with investigating allegations of human rights abuses involving Canadian companies of all stripes operating outside the country.

Ottawa is also establishing a multi-stakeholder advisory body to guide government and the ombudsperson on “responsible business conduct abroad.”

Improving mining responsibility abroad

Even at the highest level of mining industry advocacy, it’s widely accepted that Canada needs to step up its corporate responsibility game on foreign soil.

Ben Chalmers, VP of sustainable development for the Mining Association of Canada, says his organization sees the new willingness of Canadian courts to try cases involving foreign plaintiffs and Canadian companies as a step forward when it comes to transparency and clarity.

In 2004, the mining association began implementing its “towards sustainable mining” initiative. Chalmers calls it a response to some high-profile tailings pond failures during the 1990s, such as the one near Virginia, South Africa, in 1994, when the Merriespruit tailings dam collapsed, killing 17 people and destroying 80 houses.

The initiative provides protocols and frameworks for companies on all aspects of operations, including aboriginal and community engagement, greenhouse gas emissions and tailings management, biodiversity conservation, health and safety, crisis management, mine closures and the prevention of child and forced labour.

To achieve verification, a company must conduct annual self-assessments, get an external verification every three years and provide a CEO letter of assurance confirming that the outside assessment meets the standards, Chalmers says.

“We’re not without problems as an industry. But I’d say as a country, we’re doing more than most to address conflicts that arise between companies and the communities in which they operate overseas,” he asserts.

“I also think that we’re seeing more companies adopting progressive and proactive policies on their own.”

As proof of Canada’s commitment to socially responsible mining, Chalmers cites a 2018 study by Paul Haslam, an associate professor in the University of Ottawa’s faculty of social sciences, which rates 634 mining properties in five Latin American countries for their impact on local communities. Out of this total, Haslam and his fellow researchers identified 128 mines with known social conflict, nearly 33 per cent of them Canadian-owned.

Although Chalmers think it’s a decent batting average, Catherine Coumans, research coordinator for MiningWatch Canada, says if this is how Canadian mining companies are playing ball, they need to strive for a much better standard on the international stage. In her view, the mining association’s sustainable mining effort smacks of the fox guarding the henhouse.

Case in point: in 2016, the Mining Association of Canada gave a leadership award to Hudbay Minerals for its Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Co. at the same time the company was defending itself against alleged human rights infringements at its former mine in Guatemala.

“We don’t think [towards sustainable mining] is the highest standard that it could be,” Coumans says from MiningWatch Canada’s Ottawa headquarters.

Activists and industry watchers are anticipating the full implementation of an independent set of standards known as the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, she notes.

Mining’s day of reckoning

The fact that the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance has been 12 years in the making is a testament to the socioeconomic complexity of mining.

Where the “towards sustainable mining” program was driven internally by the Canadian mining sector, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance emerged after citizen activists started showing up with placards at retailers like American luxury jewelry chain Tiffany & Co. in the mid-2000s, when the public shaming of so-called blood diamonds from Africa was hitting a fever pitch and consumers demanded to know more about precious-gem and metals procurement policies. When these retailers approached non-governmental organizations for guidance in identifying the “green miners,” Seattle-based Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance coordinator Aimee Boulanger explains, they found there was no credible body to help them separate good and bad actors.

“It has been a hard process because mining is so complex. No two sites are the same, from the geochemical conditions to the water conditions of a mine, or the sociopolitical conditions of a given jurisdiction,” Boulanger says. “The strength of [the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance] will be the fact that the third-party verification will be just as important as the standards themselves.”

The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance launched in 2019 with a heavyweight steering committee including representatives from the mining giants Anglo American and ArcelorMittal, downstream purchasers like Microsoft Corp. and Tiffany, human rights and environmental non-governmental organizations, labour groups and Indigenous leaders.

Currently two mines, Anglo-American’s Baro Alto Mine in Brazil and the Carrizal Mine in Mexico are using the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance self-assessment tool to measure their social and environmental performance and are sharing their findings publicly on a responsible mining map.

“We don’t yet have any Canadian mines that have come in asking to be recognized by [the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurances] system, but we hope some soon will,” Boulanger says, adding that the initiative is working with the Mining Association of Canada on a project to explore a possible level of shared recognition.

Boulanger places mining in a similar phase as the garment and forestry industries more than a decade ago, when consumers and activists began placing their practices in a glaring spotlight, whether it was a sweatshop in Bangladesh or old-growth clear-cutting in B.C. Such pressure helped put corporate and social responsibility at the top of boardroom agendas in those industries; Boulanger believes mining’s day of reckoning is next.

“My hope is that CEOs will realize that they won’t be able to avoid this level of corporate responsibility indefinitely,” she says.

Mining is already a much different world than it was in the 1990s. Organizations like ResponsibleSteel and the Responsible Jewellery Council, both based in the U.K., are targeting their sectors to raise ethical standards.

Loose language from the Canadian government exhorting Canadian companies to respect the law of whatever country they’re operating in no longer cuts it. Consumers, buyers and now Canadian courts are expecting more.

In turn, lawsuits like the ones faced by Tahoe and Nevsun playing out in Vancouver courtrooms, and Hudbay Minerals in Ontario, have put Canadian miners on notice.

“Canada is actively mining in many countries where the rule of law is loose,” attorney Fiorante says.

“We’re trying to place legal responsibility right at the top of these companies.”

A version of this article originally appeared in BC Business.

*Updated 11 a.m. June 12, 2019, to reflect the fact that Tahoe Resources was acquired by Pan American Silver in February 2019.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Both Canada and British Columbia have vowed to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). And yet recent natural resource decisions — like the approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline or ongoing construction of the Site C dam — have some wondering what governments mean when they make that promise.

Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, says natural resource development can create conflict with Indigenous populations and often make Indigenous women and children, the most vulnerable members of our population, more vulnerable.

Neve recently traveled to B.C. to highlight human rights abuses in the province with high ranking officials including attorney general David Eby and Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Minister Scott Fraser.

DeSmog Canada asked Neve how he was received by the government and what human rights abuses he is concerned about in B.C.

The interview has been edited for brevity.

How would you place B.C. on the spectrum of Canadian and international human rights concerns?

Amnesty International has a number of serious and long-standing human rights concerns here in B.C. which go back quite a number of years. Obviously here in B.C. and Canada we are very fortunate when it comes to human rights. We are not faced with the horrific situations that capture headlines in places like Syria or the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, or countries with hundreds of people being held as prisoners of conscience.

But there are very real and pressing human rights concerns in Canada and in B.C.

By any measure, it is the rights of Indigenous people that is our biggest challenge and our most serious responsibility when it comes to improving Canada’s human rights record.

[The] Site C [dam] is really an iconic example of the long-standing failure to show proper regard for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and how readily and easily governments across this country seem on one hand to be able to talk aspirational and inspirational things when it comes to the rights of Indigenous peoples, and then turn around and make decisions that simply do not live up to those words. And that’s not acceptable.

What are some of the key issues you’ve been discussing with B.C. cabinet ministers and senior government officials?

In 2004 we issued a major nation-wide report, Stolen Sisters, documenting the severity of violence and discrimination against Indigenous women everywhere in Canada. It included a significant component looking at concerns here in B.C.

Here we are, 14 years later, and that has not at all been addressed and there continue to be very serious concerns in B.C.

Related to that, about a year and half ago we put out a major report looking at the situation in the northeast of the province and the way in which that area’s resource development boom has had a very significant, and sadly detrimental, impact on the rights of Indigenous peoples — and particularly on the rights of Indigenous women. A response is needed to ensure that Indigenous rights and rights of Indigenous women in particular are better safeguarded and respected in the context of resource development.

A response is needed to ensure that Indigenous rights and rights of Indigenous women in particular are better safeguarded and respected in the context of resource development.

We were deeply disappointed that the government chose in December to continue with construction of the [Site C] dam. We find it totally unacceptable that the government has chosen what they consider to be financial considerations over — once again — a commitment to uphold the right of Indigenous peoples. But we’re not giving up.

Are there other projects in B.C. that cause you particular concern?

We’ve also been focusing on the very serious human rights concerns associated with the 2014 mining disaster at the Mount Polley mine which… has a very serious impact on First Nations in the area. We’re very concerned that here we are, four years later, and there’s been no accountability for what has happened there.

We follow with concern and interest all the developments around Kinder Morgan. We know there’s a lot of concern about fracking in the province. If there was a moment where there was a very clear international human rights dimension that we felt needed some attention we would look at that.

What role does resource development in B.C. play in violence against Indigenous women and girls?

In 2016 we put out a report, Out of Sight, Out of Mind. It highlights the fact that the province’s resource boom — and we focused on the situation in and around Fort St. John — has had very detrimental impacts for women’s safety and Indigenous women in particular. And even beyond safety, just in general regard for protection of their rights.

How is that?

There’s a massive influx of transient workers, which brings with it a very serious pressure on local services across a whole variety of areas, including for women who may be having economic insecurity, or who may be facing risk of violence in the home or community. Those services are dramatically overextended.

Indigenous women and girls inevitably suffer more than others.

The influx of a transient population brings people who aren’t known in the community, and with it concerns about their actions against Indigenous women and girls. And all of this without any kind of commitment to gender analysis, as resource projects are being approved and decisions being made about how policing is going to be funded and what kind of policing and at what levels. There’s a terrible gap and it’s Indigenous women and girls who suffer as a result.

One of our key recommendations is to ensure that we are bringing a strong model of gender-based analysis into decisions about all sorts of resource development projects, small ones and also large ones like the Site C dam.

Has B.C. made progress in addressing human rights issues?

We have very much welcomed the new government’s very strong commitment to endorse the United Nation Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). If we truly did have decision-making and laws and policies and an approach to consultation and relations that were in keeping with the framework of the declaration, a lot of these issues would not have become the human rights travesties that they have become. The solutions, the way forward, would be much more obvious.

We’re very enthusiastic and encouraging that the government move forward with their plans to move past simply saying ‘we believe in the declaration’ to actually starting to develop a legislative framework and some strong commitments to making it so.

The other very significant law reform initiative underway in the province is the reestablishment of the B.C. Human Rights Commission. We were very troubled over a decade ago now when the previous government dis-established the previous human rights commission. It certainly is a welcome move to reverse that step and get B.C. back in the game of ensuring that there is a provincial level body that is going to be a strong champion of human rights in the province.

What kind of a reception did you get from the government on Site C?

We weren’t naive enough to think that we were going to sit down with any members of government and make our case about why it was the wrong decision and suddenly have them reserve the decision in the meeting. We repeatedly heard at every level that they felt anguish and conflict about the decision and certainly didn’t feel happy about it.

This really is now a matter for the courts. Lawsuits have been commenced and there’s important steps coming forward, including a hearing in July with respect to a request that’s been made for an injunction. We are strongly calling on the government to ensure that they adopt a litigation strategy as they go through those lawsuits that is entirely consistent with their commitments to UNDRIP and to the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In years and decades past both federal and provincial lawyers would show up in court in Indigenous rights cases and be aggressive and obstructive and litigious. They would take positions that important international standards like UNDRIP shouldn’t be applied. If this government’s commitment to UNDRIP is genuine, one of the first places to demonstrate that is the tone and the substance of the arguments that they make as this case moves through the courts.

That injunction application in July [filed by West Moberly First Nations and Prophet River First Nation to halt Site C construction until their legal case can be heard] will be a first test. One very obvious way to demonstrate how genuine they are would be to simply agree to the injunction without fighting it out in the courts. But at a minimum they need to ensure the legal arguments they make do not run counter to the commitments they say they embrace.

What are some of your other specific requests of the B.C. government?

We’re in a very challenging and important time right now when it comes to addressing violence against Indigenous women and girls right now in Canada because we have the National Inquiry [into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls] underway.

Clearly that has come up in all our meetings. We’re concerned that while the inquiry is proceeding — and we now have the prospect of another two years — that the kinds of concrete steps and action that need to be taken now to address this very severe human rights situation have largely been put on hold.

So we are calling on all governments and certainly the B.C. government to start to much more actively pursue reforms and programs now, and not wait for the end of the national inquiry. We’re concerned that government are not doing enough to address the very serious gaps in services for Indigenous women and girls who face violence.

How would you characterize this government’s receptiveness to Amnesty International compared to the previous B.C. government?

Amnesty is never partisan in how we go about our work. We seek to engage with all governments of all political stripes. We did not have a particularly encouraging record of engagement with the previous government provincially. We never had a ministerial level meeting with the previous government.

Did you ask for meetings with the previous government under the BC Liberals?

Yes, several times. Whereas with the current government doors have opened that were previously shut and we welcome that very much. But clearly it’s not just about sitting down and talking. What we’re keen to see now is the follow-up and action that will put proof to the promises, especially around things like UNDRIP.

We’re hearing all the right things and sensing a genuine commitment to move that forward. But then you have something like the Site C decision, which completely contradicts the commitment to UNDRIP and the embrace of the [recommendations of the] Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

At the heart of both of those is a fundamental principle that true regard for treaty rights means something. We’re clearly not seeing that around Site C.

We are fortunate that we are so prosperous here in Canada. That means our responsibility to dig deeper and truly do the right thing when it comes to our human rights record is all the greater.

We have the resources, we have the knowledge, we have the awareness. There’s no excuse for not moving forward with a strong human rights agenda that will stand as a model globally.

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Ending months of speculation, Premier John Horgan announced Monday that construction of the Site C dam on B.C.’s Peace River will continue even though the cost of the troubled project has climbed to $10.7 billion and the government faces a potentially pricey legal challenge from First Nations.

“This is a very divisive issue,” Horgan said at a press conference. “I don’t have a magic solution but I have the best solution that we can come up with in the time I have as premier to make sure that we’re doing the least amount of damage…and making the best of a bad situation.”

Horgan justified approval for Site C — the most expensive public infrastructure project in B.C.’s history — on the grounds that the previous Liberal government successfully pushed the project “past the point of no return” and that terminating it will be too costly for British Columbians, a rationale immediately disputed by former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen, academics and energy experts.

Eliesen warned that Site C will be a long term “calamity” for British Columbians.

Amnesty International and First Nations Outraged

Amnesty International, meanwhile, slammed the B.C. government for violating basic human rights, saying that Site C violates United Nations guidelines for forced evictions and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that the NDP government had pledged to uphold.

Craig Benjamin, Amnesty Canada’s Indigenous Rights campaigner, said forcing 70 Peace Valley residents like Ken and Arlene Boon from their homes or property for Site C contravenes UN guidelines protecting the right to housing — which, according to Benjamin, “is not just your immediate home but the place where you live and raise your family.”

Pushing people off their homes and land should only be done as a “last resort,” said Benjamin, adding Site C fails that test. UN guidelines hold that the BC government must show a “higher standard of necessity” than the 12 per cent increase in hydro rates over 10 years that Horgan said would ensue if Site C were terminated, Benjamin told DeSmog Canada.

“These types of rationalizations don’t deal with the harm being done the people whose homes are being lost.”

Site C, in the traditional homeland of Treaty 8 First Nations, will flood 83 kilometres of the heritage Peace River and 45 kilometres of its tributary rivers and creeks — a total distance the equivalent of driving from Victoria to Nanaimo or Vancouver to Whistler.

Two Treaty 8 First Nations immediately announced they will seek a court injunction to stop the project and will commence a civil action on the grounds that Site C infringes on treaty rights. “They have more than what they need in front of them to stop this project,” West Moberly First Nations chief Roland Willson told DeSmog Canada.

Willson said his nation “saw the writing on the wall” when Horgan declined to stop construction of Site C pending an independent review of the project by the watchdog B.C. Utilities Commission. “I don’t think they had any intention of cancelling it,” he said. “I was hoping for so much more.”

Willson said the decision “doesn’t say much” about the NDP government’s commitment to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a sentiment echoed by Benjamin.

“The violation is deeper than the UN Declaration,” said Benjamin. “It’s multi-part. One part of the violation is the violation of Indigenous peoples’ rights to make their own decisions. Clearly at no point has there been consideration of the right of Indigenous peoples to say ‘we want to use the land in other ways.’ That’s never been on the table.”

The second violation is the substantial harm that Site C would cause, Benjamin said. He said both common sense and Site C’s environmental impact assessment show that flooding such a large extent of the Peace River Valley and its tributaries — one of the “last remaining places where people can still exercise their culture, take their kids out on the land to learn who they are”  — will have a “devastating impact” on the ability of First Nations to exercise their human rights.

These rights include the rights to culture, health, a livelihood and the right to food, including food not purchased in a grocery store, Benjamin said. “These are fundamental human rights.”

Landowners "Not Moving"

Horgan’s announcement was met with tears, anger and disappointment by members of the Peace Valley Landowner Association, representing 70 residents who will lose homes, property, livelihoods and a traditional way of life in the valley to Site C.

Arlene Boon, whose third-generation family farm was expropriated last December for a Site C highway relocation, said she was too upset to talk. The Boons had been permitted to remain in their home, built by Arlene’s grandfather, pending the government’s final decision.

Ken Boon, president of the landowners’ association, said he was not impressed with Horgan’s rationale for continuing Site C.

“I can’t believe what a poor job they did spinning this,” said Boon, pointing to the government’s stated commitment to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as one example of the government using contradictory rationale to continue with the project.

He said the landowners need time to absorb the information about their impending displacement. “This is the biggest setback we’ve had for sure, but the opposition to this project has nine lives. We’ve had so many setbacks and we’ve always survived. We’re not moving. I’m not very good at predicting what will stop Site C but I think something will."

Behind-the-scenes Maneuvering

Horgan’s announcement followed concerted lobbying efforts by NDP insiders and construction trade unions who are donors to the NDP, attempting to discredit some of the findings of an independent review of Site C by the watchdog B.C. Utilities Commission.

The independent review partially lifted the veil of secrecy that shrouded the project under the former Liberal government, revealing among many other issues that Site C is significantly over budget, behind schedule, burdened by financial and legal issues with its major civil works contractor, and beset with geotechnical difficulties — only two years into a nine-year construction timeline.

Calling the decision “sad and stupid,” Eliesen said that the only conclusion that can be reached from the BCUC final report, based on the economics, is that Site C should be terminated. “It looks like the referral for the independent review was inauthentic,” he said in an interview.

“Since the NDP for good economic and social reasons prior to the election argued against Site C, the only conclusion one can reach is that the entrenched bureaucracy, including that of BC Hydro, are pulling the strings.”

Today’s announcement reinforces the perception by Peace Valley residents and many Treaty 8 First Nations that successive BC governments have unofficially designated the Peace region as an industrial sacrifice zone.

The region is already known for its unbridled industrial development — including fracking, conventional oil and gas development, mining, forestry, and two previous large dams on the Peace River. Flooding the last remaining tract of the Peace River Valley left to First Nations to engage in their traditional practices — such as hunting and fishing — is unacceptable, said Willson.

Horgan acknowledged the impact of Site C on Indigenous peoples, noting that they have already endured “over 150 years of disappointment.”

“I am not the first person to stand before you and disappoint Indigenous people,” the premier said. “But I think I am the first to stand before you and say I am going to do my level best to make amends for a whole host of issues and decisions that previous governments have made to put Indigenous people in an unwinnable situation.”

UBC professor Karen Bakker pointed out that, even at the revised price tag of $10.7 billion, Site C still has the potential for “significant” cost overruns that B.C. ratepayers will have to shoulder.

The BCUC report pointed to geotechnical issues as one of Site C’s greatest financial risks, while the cost of First Nations court cases against Site C is another financial factor that must be considered, said Bakker, a Canada Research Chair in Political Ecology who co-authored several academic reports on Site C.

“I think the claim to saving money should be verified against the BCUC analysis to see if there are any discrepancies,” Bakker said in an interview. “There are still gaps [and] unanswered questions about the full cost implications for ratepayers.”

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First Nations’ consent to the Site C dam should determine the project’s fate, according to Amnesty International Canada’s Craig Benjamin.

“At the end of the day with regard to human rights you can simply ask ‘what are First Nations saying?’ ”

“And if they’re saying no, we have to say no as well,” Benjamin, campaigner for human rights and indigenous peoples from Amnesty International Canada, told an audience gathered in Victoria this week.

Speaking at a public education event with West Moberly First Nations’ Chief Roland Willson, Benjamin said Canada is breaking its own laws when it comes to the rights of First Nations.

The West Moberly First Nation is launching a legal challenge of the B.C. government’s recent approval of the Site C dam, a $9 billion dollar hydroelectric project that will flood over 100 square kilometres of forest and rich agricultural farmland.

Benjamin, who recently traveled to the region, said the project poses a threat to First Nations’ cultural way of life: “It’s a violation of standards that exist in the international community, which Canada has sworn to uphold.”

“These are all fundamental human rights — the right to a healthy environment, to clean water, the right to one’s culture, the right to one’s identity, the right of indigenous peoples to make their own decisions about their lives and their futures.”

“These are all being threatened by the plan to proceed with this dam.”

Benjamin noted the recent Tsilhqot'in Supreme Court victory further protects indigenous rights and self-determination on traditional territory.

“One of the things that court decision did was to set out in the clearest possible language that if the government wants to tread on the rights of indigenous peoples there’s an extremely high standard that it has to meet of justification to show why the project should be allowed to go forward.”

But according to the government’s own standards, no project can “substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land,” he said. In addition the government must meet a duty to consult and accommodate and demonstrate the project’s objective meets the needs of general Canadians and indigenous peoples.

“These are requirements that our own Supreme Court set out.”

“And this plan fails every one of those tests and yet two levels of government want to proceed with it. Two levels of government want to fight it in the courts. Two levels of government want to expend all of their resources to pursue it even though the highest court of the land has already set out a test that this project doesn’t meet.”

He also argued that there is an “underside” to the claim of benefits (i.e. jobs) associated with construction of the Site C dam.

“All of the oil and gas development that has taken place up there has created a situation where the ratio of short-term workers to long-term residents in Fort St. John is four to one,” he said. This has caused housing prices to skyrocket and has placed a significant strain on the “social safety net” in the area.

In addition, Benjamin argued, the potential impact on the most vulnerable members of society — especially indigenous women — should not be overlooked.

“The reason why Amnesty International initially wanted to look at this is because of what we’re already seeing in Canada around the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women.”

In Canada indigenous women and girls are more than seven times more likely to experience violence in its most brutal and extreme forms, he said.

The circumstances in the region, which include housing shortages, strained medical services, massive gender wage inequality and a flood of transitory workers create a “perfect storm…to accentuate the injury against the lives of women.”

Image Credit: Chief Roland Willison. Photo by Garth Lenz

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This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

It sometimes seems people in the mining and fossil fuel industries — along with their government promoters — don’t believe in the future. What else could explain the mad rush to extract and use up the Earth’s resources as quickly and wastefully as possible?

Global mining production, including fossil fuels, has almost doubled since 1984, from just over nine-billion tonnes to almost 17-billion in 2012, with the greatest increases over the past 10 years.

It’s partly to meet rising demand from expanding human populations and supply the cycle of consumerism that fuels the global economy through planned obsolescence, marketing unnecessary products and wasteful technologies. And, as the British Geological Survey notes, “It may be uncomfortable to acknowledge, but wars have been the drivers for many of mankind’s technological developments. Such technologies depend on secure supplies of numerous mineral commodities for which demand inevitably escalates in times of war.”

Mining is important to human well-being, but the current economic system means it’s often aimed at maximizing profit with little regard for people or the environment. It’s one area where Canadians can make a difference. Canada is a global leader in mining, especially in Latin America. According to the Mining Association of Canada, “Almost 60% of the world’s public mining companies are listed on the TSX and TSX-Venture Exchanges, and 70% of the equity capital raised globally for mining companies is raised on these exchanges.” The association adds, “Canadian-headquartered mining companies accounted for nearly 37% of budgeted worldwide exploration expenditures in 2012.” Canada has also tied foreign aid to support for mining interests.

Canadian mining companies haven’t always had a great record for environmental and social responsibility in communities where they operate — but public scrutiny and pressure may be helping to change that. In the face of criticism, industry leaders insist practices are improving. “The Canadian mining industry, and certainly what our members are doing now, is much, much different now than what it was 20, 25 years ago,” Canadian Mining Association president and CEO Pierre Gratton told Global News in response to a critical Council on Hemispheric Affairs article.

According to the June 2014 article, “Large-scale Canadian mining companies, and the Canadian government that oversees such commercial ventures, have failed to adhere to reliable standards of international law, which assert that home states are responsible for the actions of their citizens abroad.” The article points to evidence that Canadian mining corporations have often operated with little regard for nature reserves and protected areas, and have depleted scarce water supplies, neglected indigenous rights and disrupted communities and created health problems through air, water and land pollution. “Each year, a number of protestors who raise concerns against mining activities are seriously injured, persecuted, or even killed.”

That appears to be the case at a gold- and silver-mining operation in Guatemala run by a subsidiary of Canada’s Goldcorp. According to the Guardian, it’s drawn numerous local complaints for “intimidation, threats, social division, violence, bribery and corruption of local authorities, destruction and contamination of water sources, livestock dying, houses shaking, cracked walls, the criminalization of protest, forest cleared, and appalling health impacts such as malnutrition and skin diseases.” An indigenous man who spoke against the mine was beaten and burned alive by hooded men who first questioned him about anti-mining activities. Goldcorp has denied the allegations.

In the past, Canadian companies haven’t been held responsible for actions of foreign subsidiaries — but that may change. A number of people from Eritrea and Guatemala are suing three Canadian mining companies in Canadian courts for alleged abuses at mines in those countries, which include forced labour, human rights violations and assault. The Financial Post said lawyers are getting around the “corporate veil” by “suing the Canadian parents for negligence and other traditional torts on the grounds that management hasn’t lived up to the standards outlined in their public pronouncements.” In other words, the companies are being held globally to the standards they publicly claim at home.

Mining is important but, as with much human activity in the face of rapidly growing populations, we must learn to develop and use resources in ways that aren’t wasteful, destructive and unsustainable. And mining companies must be held to high standards for environmental and human rights protection — at home and abroad.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundations Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image credit: Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

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“Responsible Resource Development.”

“World-Class Environmental Monitoring.”

“Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity.”

These are just some of the titles to emerge from the Harper government in recent years to pleasantly describe what is otherwise seen as a myopic and undemocratic program of increased resource extraction across the country. Yet, according to a new report released by the human rights watch group Amnesty International, Canada’s pursuit of energy superstardom has sidelined the nation’s human rights issues.

According to Amnesty International the Harper government has put economic development above human rights concerns and this is playing out most notably in the growing conflict between First Nations and the energy resources sector.

In a press release on its website Amnesty notes Harper’s recent statement to the UN General Assembly where he called for a world “where human rights and justice are preserved.”

Amnesty notes, “government action far too often fails to match those words.”

Alex Neve, director general for the group, recently told The Canadian Press that Amnesty wants human rights front and centre in next year’s upcoming federal election.

“With all the attention that will be on jobs and the economy, we have to recognize how important it is to deal with indigenous people’s land rights, corporate accountability and a trade policy that is grounded in human rights,” he said.

“All of that is not only good for rights and justice, but that’s actually ultimately the road for more sustainable economic growth.”

The Harper government has recently come under international fire for mistreatment of indigenous communities across Canada. James Anaya, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Aboriginal People, said Canada “faces a crisis when it comes to the situation of indigenous peoples of the country.”

Anaya said in the 10 years since the UN’s last visit to Canada, no significant progress has been made to address the very serious threats faced by aboriginal communities. In his recommendations to Canada, Anaya pressed Canada to avoid resource extraction on traditional indigenous lands without “adequate consultations” and the “free, prior and informed consent” of affected aboriginal communities.

Yet both federal and provincial governments have continued to push for new oilsands development, pipelines, fracking and mines on First Nations territory.

Intensive expansion of the oilsands in Alberta has led to multiple high-profile legal battles with local First Nations and proposed oilsands pipelines have ignited similar battles in British Columbia and likely Ontario.

A protest against gas fracking in New Brunswick made international headlines last year after a Mi’kmaq blockade on Elsipogtog territory was met with an aggressive police response including snipers. Similar conflicts have occurred on other reserves like that of the Kainai Blood Tribe, where aboriginal communities were met with violence and imprisonment for their opposition to fracking and natural gas development.

Mining has also been centre-stage in the conflict between indigenous communities and government and industry.

In British Columbia after the disaster at Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley mine the Tahltan nation set up a blockade at the entrance of the company’s Red Chris mine and called for an independent, third-party review.

The long-standing conflict between First Nations and the extractive industry was radically altered this year after the Tsilhqot’in people in Northern British Columbia won the most significant land title dispute in the country’s history. The implications of that precedent-setting decision will become clear as nations make similar land-based territorial claims across the province.

In addition the Harper government ratified the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Act (FIPA), a trade agreement that pits First Nations rights against the legal obligation under the treaty to protect Chinese investments in projects like the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

Amnesty is calling on the Harper government to subject such trade agreements to rigorous and independent human rights assessments. Amnesty also recommends the government establish an ombudsman for the extractive industries and provide better access to Canadian courts for people harmed by Canadian mining companies.

The groups is also challenging Canada to respect both international and domestic laws that protect indigenous rights and to launch a public inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women.

Alexandra Lemieux, spokesperson with Natural Resources Canada, said “our government has taken substantial action to enhance participation of First Nations in resource development.”

She added, “we recently opened the Major Projects Management Office-West to enhance engagement between governments, industry and First Nations.”

According to Amnesty’s report an estimated 600 new major resource extraction projects are planned for Canada over the next decade. And although many of these projects will affect First Nations, Inuit and Métis the federal government has not ensured indigenous rights will be protected, the report states.

“Canada’s failure to ground economic development in respect for Indigenous peoples’ rights, hesitancy to ratify treaties that enhance law and order, and inconsistency in which countries attract Canada’s criticism are among the issues outlined in the new agenda,” Neve said.

“Economic growth, the quest for law and order and the promotion of freedom and democracy abroad must have respect for human rights at their core.”

“With an election on the horizon,” he added, “the human rights agenda is clear.”

“The road to economic success must be based on respect for rights of Indigenous peoples, upholding economic, social and cultural rights, welcoming refugees, and protecting the human rights of all."

Image Credit: Joyce Williams and Linda Williams of the Squamish Nation. Photo by Kris Krug.

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On March 3rd, former Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver unveiled a new transparency initiative that will require Canadian mining companies to report significant payments made to governments both abroad and in Canada. Under the new law, medium and large publicly traded companies will post the details of payments above the $100,000 threshold on their company websites, listed on a project-by-project basis.

Oliver described the initiative as a “comprehensive and meaningful approach” designed to “enhance transparency and accountability in the mining and oil and gas industries.” 

The new legislation comes as the most recent installment in a long list of policy changes implemented by the Conservative government in an attempt to improve the international standing of the Canadian extractive industries.

Last month saw the opening of the Vancouver headquarters of the Canadian International Institute for Extractive Industries and Development (CIIEID), a joint project between the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and École Polytechnique de Montréal that received nearly $24.6 million in funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. According to the CIIEID website, the institute’s mission is “to improve governance of extractive sectors in developing countries.” 

The timing of both Oliver’s announcement and the opening of the CIIEID reflects not only the growing importance of the mining and oil and gas sector to the Canadian economy, but also the increasing level of social and environmental conflict associated with the activities of the Canadian extractive industries both at home and abroad.

Complaints against Canadian mining companies over environmental and human rights abuses and have been piling up in recent years. An unpublished mining industry report obtained by the Toronto Star in 2010 concluded that “Canadian companies are far and away the worst offenders in environmental, human rights and other abuses around the world.” 

The report listed 171 high profile incidents over the last decade, with Canadian companies involved in 34 percent of those incidents. Canadian companies were involved in four times as many incidents related to community conflicts, environmental infractions, human rights abuses and unethical behavior as the nearest runner-up countries, Australia and the UK.

This abysmal track record has prompted demands for better government oversight for Canadian companies operating overseas, with even the extractive industry itself calling for a clearer regulatory framework. In January this year, the Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group— composed of representatives from the extractive industries, along with non-profit organizations and transparency groups— released a report calling for stronger regulation of the mining industry. 

Screen shot from The Mining Association of Canada website.

“A lack of clarity around who benefits from resource extraction breeds mistrust between communities, governments and companies, generating unstable business environments, threatening the security of supply, and even, in extreme cases, contributing to violent conflict," the report states. The rules announced by Oliver are broadly aligned with the conclusions of the report.

The new transparency framework has met with mixed reactions. Organizations such as Oxfam, Publish What You Pay and Engineers Without Borders Canada have cautiously praised the new law. While they note that it leaves room for improvement, they describe Oliver’s announcement as a significant step towards shoring up an international transparency regime for the mining sector.

But the announcement has also faced serious criticism. David Eaves, a Vancouver-based public policy entrepreneur and advisor, pointed to the lack of a centralized system for collecting and displaying the payment disclosure data as a major shortcoming.

According to the rules spelled out by Oliver, the payment data posted on mining company websites will not be collected and put into a centralized database by the federal government. While Oliver describes the decision to reject a single database as a move to increase efficiency and cut down on bureaucratic excess, Eaves has called the move “secrecy by obscurity.” 

The decentralized approach favoured by Oliver stands in contrast to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an international framework for payment transparency currently implemented by 26 countries. Although Canada contributed $12.6 million to the creation of the EITI, it has declined to join the agreement. Notably, the EITI approach consolidates the payment data reported by extractive industry companies in an easy-to-read database format.

“So unlike EITI, which offers a centralized repository where records can quickly be downloaded and compared, Canada’s “compliance” will involve each company maintaining its own records “somewhere” and will require anyone interested in actually figuring out what is going on to track down each one individually,” wrote Eaves in an editorial for the Toronto Star. 

Oliver’s announcement comes after similar legislation proposed by Liberal MP John McKay failed to pass. McKay has made two separate attempts to tighten up regulation in the mining sector. Bill C-300, a private member’s bill that was narrowly defeated by a vote of 140-134 in 2010, would have required the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of International Trade to investigate all complaints made against Canadian extractive industry companies operating in developing countries.

Bill C-374, McKay’s second proposed piece of mining legislation, would have created a transparency framework with much stricter regulations than Oliver’s plan. Also known as the “The Sunshine Bill,” C-374 outlined a framework that would require companies to report all payments (not only those over $100,000) made to foreign governments and to display that information in a centralized database, in accordance with the international data standards employed by the EITI. The bill also called for an independent financial auditing system and hefty fines for non-compliance.

McKay sees little promise in Oliver’s new transparency framework, describing its unveiling as “an announcement essentially without substance.” While Oliver called for the rules to be implemented by April 2015, McKay sees 2017 or 2018 as a more likely timeline given the Conservative track record. 

Image Credit: CIIEID, EITI

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James Anaya, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples, upon completion of his 8-day visit to Canada said the country “faces a crisis when it comes to the situation of indigenous peoples of the country.”

The overarching message in Anaya's concluding statement, released yesterday, is that over the last decade Canada has failed to make any meaningful progress on the very serious threats faced by aboriginal communities. 

Anaya's visit comes 10 years after the 2003 visit by UN Special Rapporteur Rodolfo Stavenhagen who, at the time, stressed “the economic, social and human indicators of well-being, quality of life and development are consistently lower among Aboriginal people than other Canadians.”  In 2004 Stavenhagen noted poverty, infant mortality, unemployment, morbidity, suicide, criminal detention, children on welfare, women victims of abuse, child prostitution are significantly higher in Aboriginal populations compared to any other sector of Canadian society, while education, health, housing conditions, family income, and equal access to economic and social opportunities are much lower.

Canada, Stavenhagen assured the international community in 2003, had “taken up the challenge to close this gap.”

Upon completion of Anaya’s current visit he stated Canada still has a very long way to go in its work to tighten the “well-being gap” between Aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians.

Canada, notes Anaya, was one of the first countries to extend constitutional protection to indigenous peoples’ rights, yet, he says “despite positive steps, daunting challenges remain” for Canada.

“The well-being gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in Canada has not narrowed over the last several years, treaty and aboriginal claims remain persistently unresolved, and overall there appear to be high levels of distrust among aboriginal peoples toward government at both the federal and provincial levels,” he said.

Although Canada ranks high on international indices of human development standards, he said, “amidst this wealth and prosperity, aboriginal people live in conditions akin to those in countries that rank much lower and in which poverty abounds.”

He noted dismal living conditions, poor education and high suicide rates in aboriginal communities were alarming. This is not new information, said Anaya, who added the Canadian Human Rights Commission “has consistently said that the conditions of aboriginal peoples makes for the most serious human rights problem in Canada.”

He also said that the “disturbing phenomenon” of murdered and missing aboriginal women forms part of the “long shadow” of oppression that includes residential schools and other aspects of Canadian First Nations’ history.

Of additional concern, says Anaya, is the fact that Canada’s ‘solutions’ to the variety of social and economic hardships faced by aboriginal communities “has not appropriately included nor responded to aboriginal views.” He added one hundred and thirty years of Indian Act policies have persistently undermined, and continute to undermine, First Nation’s and Inuit people’s self-governance, which is essential to “creating socially and economically healthy and self-sufficient aboriginal communities.”

Anaya’s preliminary recommendations, reported by Roger Annis on the Vancouver Observer, are listed below. A more in-depth report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in 2014.

• Granting an extension to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is examining the history of the residential school policy that dates back more than one century. He says the extension should last “as long as may be necessary.” The Commission’s mandate expires on July 1, 2014, but its work has been obstructed and delayed because the federal government has refused to divulge extensive documentation about residential schools.

• Slowing a “rush forward” with planned legislation this fall to reform the Aboriginal education system. He says there is “profound distrust” among First Nations over the proposed First Nation Education Act. It will set standards for teaching staff, curriculum and students. Aboriginal leaders are concerned the act will impose standards that disregard Indigenous language and culture and that education funding will not be increased. They want immediate increases to education funding, but Minister of Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt says there will be no funding increases considered until the new act is passed.
• Establishing a public inquiry into the cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women, whose numbers are estimated at more than 600. The federal government has flatly rejected this, and is ignoring calls from international organizations and provincial governments on the matter.
• Treating the housing situation on First Nations reserves and Inuit communities “with the urgency it deserves.” He says housing conditions are unacceptable and it is “abundantly clear” that funding for aboriginal housing is “woefully inadequate.”
• Adopting a much less “adversarial” approach to dealing with aboriginal land claims and treaty disputes.
• Recognizing that “resource extraction” should not occur on lands subject to aboriginal claims without “adequate consultations” and the “free, prior and informed consent” of the Aboriginals affected.

First Nation’s children on reserves in Canada receive 22 percent less per child in federal funding and more than 500 reserve schools lack access to basic amenities like running water in libraries. The average child on reserve receives $2000 to $3000 less per year in education funding.

In addition First Nation’s communities have been on the front lines of some of Canada’s most ground-breaking – and expensive – legal challenges to environmentally harmful resource extraction. The Beaver Lake Cree Nation is undertaking what could become Canada’s most important challenge to the ever-expanding Alberta tar sands. And the Chilcotin people in Northern British Columbia are just weeks away from what might be the most significant land title hearing in Canada since the precedent-setting 1997 Delgamuukw decision.

Remote front-line communities often face the greatest impacts of resource extraction that threaten land-based ways of life. First Nations, through constitutionally-protected rights and treaty rights, must be ‘adequately consulted’ before resource projects are approved – a requirement often overlook by the Government of Canada.

In addition the lack of meaningful investment into First Nations’ land, economies and culture has led to difficult socio-economic conditions for younger generations. Child poverty is the most striking indicator of the well-being gap that is widening between on and off reserve children.

This graphic, produced by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, shows the disparity between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadian children according to province.

First Nations child poverty by the numbers:

• Each on-reserve First Nations child receives 22% less funding than each child off of reserve.
• 50 per cent of status First Nations children in Canada live in poverty.
• Approximately 3 times as many First Nations children are now in child welfare care than were ever in the residential school system.
• First Nations children are 6 to 8 times more likely to go into child welfare care than non-aboriginal children.
• 65% of kids in child welfare care in Alberta are First Nations (who account for less than 10% of the population).
• 53% of kids in child welfare care in British Columbia are First Nations.
• 1 in 6 children on reserves in Canada doesn't have clean water to drink.
• The cost to pull all First Nations children out of poverty: $1 billion.
• The World Health Organization says, for $1 properly invested in children, the taxpayer saves $7 down the line.
• That’s a net profit of $6 billion.  

For more of James Anaya’s reflections on his visit to Canada, see his written statement on the UN's website.

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This is the third and final post in the series China-Canada Investment "Straitjacket:" Exclusive Interview with Gus Van Harten. You can access Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Canada has already begun the short countdown to the day the China-Canada Investment Deal becomes ratified in the House of Commons, although the nation has been granted no opportunity to clarify or discuss the full economic or environmental significance of the agreement – the most significant in Canada's history since NAFTA.   Prime Minister Harper, who signed the agreement in Vladivostok in September, is forcing this deal through with such force and brevity it makes the undemocratic Omnibus budget bill C-38 look like a dress rehearsal.    International investment lawyer and trade agreement expert Gus Van Harten has landed center-stage in the controversy as one of the only figures willing and qualified to speak up against the investment agreement. He told DeSmog that Canada's rush to enter into an investment deal of this sort endangers Canadian democracy, threatens Canadian sovereignty and could fracture the government's loyalty to its people.    In this post, the final segment of our interview with Van Harten, he discusses in more detail just how bad this deal is for Canada economically and how much it threatens to corrupt our way of doing business. 

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The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.