75% of the Worlds Mining Sector is Based in Canada

Canada is host to 75 per cent of the world's largest exploration and mining companies. With Global Affairs Canada boasting that these 1300 companies operate in over 100 countries around the world with investments amounting in the hundreds of billions. 

 

Professor Mohammad Akbar, an Economics professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, said one of the reasons Canada is such an attractive option relates to the concentration of expertise in mining law as Canada has a long history of mining domestically.

 

In Canada, the majority of the laws applicable to mining companies relate specifically to finance, Akbar said.

 

“The Canadian government doesn’t ask too many questions about whether you’re paying your taxes in other jurisdictions either,” he said.

 

Another major problem is that the Canadian Government is also heavily invested as they have, “diverted a major part of their publicly financed foreign-aid budget toward subsidizing these company’s public relations campaigns by funding development projects in and around these foreign mines,” said Akbar. 

 

Cheryl Cameron is a campaigner for Dogwood, a non-profit that focuses on local organizing and bringing British Columbians together for a shared mission on mining reform. 

 

Cameron said that with local mining projects the cost to the economy usually pales in comparison to the costs communities face protecting freshwater, having safer communities and reducing or eliminating taxpayer costs to clean up mining waste and breaches.

 

“If we in B.C. struggle to have our voices heard like when the Mount Polley disaster occurred, then how would an employee or village in Africa or South America express their concerns,” she said.

 

The Mount Polley Mine collapsed on August 4th, 2014, sending more than 25 million cubic meters of mine waste and sludge into Hazeltine Creek, Quesnel Lake, and Polley Lake, creating a major environmental hazard. On August 5th 2014, British Columbia’s Ministry of Environment issued a Pollution Abatement Order (PAO) to undertake an environmental impact assessment of the release, and implement remediation.

 

The Supreme Court of British Columbia decided not to lay charges, “I conclude that the proposed issue is not suitable for summary determination at this time given the need for a more complete factual record in order to finally determine all of the potential arguments at play in this novel, complex, and financially significant matter. In particular, there are fact-based arguments that could undercut the entire premise for the motion, arguments which should be considered on a full factual record,”

 the Judge said.

 

Mining companies extracting overseas must adhere to the laws of the land where they are operating, yet many of these companies have been plagued by human rights violations. Inevitably this caught the attention of the United Nations, their report alleged that 28 mining companies were responsible for 30 targeted deaths and 709 cases of criminalization.

 

Our World In Data, a non-profit that advocates researching data to make progress against the world’s largest problems, ranked Canada 10th by kilo tonne for global carbon dioxide emissions. However when these same calculations are reformatted to carbon dioxide emissions per capita then Canada ranks third in the world. None of this data includes these mines operating abroad. 

 

Both Akbar and Cameron agreed that it would be near impossible to evaluate the true cost of emissions that these companies emit, mainly because the mines’ emissions are tallied in the country they operate. Both also think these companies emit far more than they report. 

 

In June 2014, seven Guatemalans farmers became plaintiffs in a civil suit against Tahoe Resources, a mining corporation that operates a mine in southeast Guatemala near the community of San Rafael Las Flores. The plaintiffs faced off against private security personnel working for Minera San Rafael. The civil suit failed in the B.C. Supreme Court with the judge citing that a Canadian court did not have jurisdiction. However, in 2017, the B.C. Court of Appeals overturned the judge’s decision, supporting the argument that the farmers would not get a fair trial in Guatemala. 

 

Then in 2017, the Canadian government responded from calls by the United Nations by allocating $1.26 million in its annual budget for the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE). The government agency would monitor and investigate claims of abuses by Canadian firms operating abroad. By 2018, the Canadian government had allocated a total of $6.8 million over six years.

 

However, Amnesty International and other civil society organizations have questioned whether CORE has the resources and independence needed to carry out its mandate.

 

Cameron believes that holding extraction companies negligent is a major first step in providing some governmental or judicial oversight towards the mining sector. 

 

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

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By Bahadur Singh