Presentation

The Future of Canada’s Mining Sector - Submission To Federal Standing Committee on Natural Resources

MiningWatch was invited to present to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources as part of its study on “The Future of Canada’s Oil and Gas, Mining and Nuclear Sectors”. In our presentation, we emphasized our concerns with the growing environmental and financial liability of tailings sites across Canada. We made three key recommendations to eliminate this growing liability: 1) Develop a national strategy to reduce the mining of primary metals, 2) establish substantial and mandatory financial securities for site clean-up and mining spills, and 3) use regulations, policies and fiscal incentives to encourage certain practices and technologies while banning or penalizing others (eg. asbestos). We also insisted on 4) the need to respect and affirm the inherent, constitutional and international rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.