Search: News, 09/2006

Backgrounder for a presentation to the 2005 North American Indigenous Mining Summit by Joan Kuyek, National Co-ordinator, MiningWatch Canada. "There is no one 'Canadian Mining Law'. Mining is largely provincial and territorial jurisdiction. Coal, uranium, and quarries all have separate and different laws from metal mining...Mining laws have been set up to protect the interests of the mining industry and to minimize the conflicts between mining companies by giving clarity to who owns what rights to mine.

(Iskut, B.C.) Lillian Moyer, a 67-year-old grandmother, was arrested September 9, 2006, at a First Nations road blockade near the Village of Iskut in northern B.C. For two months, the blockade has been preventing Vancouver mining company bcMetals from conducting exploration for a copper-gold mine in the Todagin Plateau area south of Dease Lake. Community members allege that following the arrest, bcMetals heavy equipment leaked oil into trout-bearing Coyote Creek. They intend to hold the company accountable for the spill under Canada's Fisheries Act.