(Montreal/Quebec City) While large multinationals are eyeing Quebec's natural resources and many regions are experiencing an unprecedented mining boom, a new poll reveals that the population is not ready to sacrifice their health and the environment on the altar of the economy.
Victims of a 2015 mine collapse disaster in Brazil are hopeful for justice after the U.K.'s court of appeal agreed to hear the case against one of the country's largest mining companies. Catherine Coumans is interviewed on CBC's The Current about the situation in Canada for corporate accountability and the urgent need to pass due diligence legislation to hold companies to account.
As the province permits mines to hold more tailings slurry behind ever-growing dams, a new report finds the consequences of a failure grow in step. Climate change could make things even worse. A new report released by BC Mining Law Reform and SkeenaWild, along with an interactive online map, illustrates how the consequences of a dam failure here could be catastrophic, potentially killing hundreds of people, destroying infrastructure and wiping out ecosystems. Francesca Fionda writes for The Narwhal.
Water defenders just won an important battle in Cuenca, Southern Ecuador, against metal mining in the Kimsakocha páramos, where Canadian company Dundee Precious Metals is attempting to develop its Loma Larga gold-arsenic mine. On Tuesday, a local judge granted Protective Measures to the Kimsakocha páramos and suspended all mining activities on the grounds that the Ecuadorian State and company failed to consult with affected communities.
Risks escalating due to more frequent catastrophic climate change-related weather events
A B.C.-based company is looking to unleash a new era of resource extraction, raising questions over how to protect the planet's deep-sea ecosystems we know the least about. Stefan Labbé reports for North Shore News.
A House of Commons committee is studying links between resource extraction and violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada.
The Standing Committee on the Status of Women, made up of Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic MPs, announced the study in April in response to calls to justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Community members maintain they were not properly consulted by Solaris, and that the company’s model of dialogue has in fact displaced their ancestral governance systems. Meanwhile Canada’s government is chipping in by helping develop a licensing system in the country that could expand mining even more. Solaris appears to have fully exported the Canadian reconciliation model: a new rhetorical and tactical embrace of Indigenous peoples, covering for the same old resource pillage. Ana Cristina Alvarado reports for The Breach.
"By participating in the national strike, the communities who are resisting mining are expressing their rejection and indignation against all attempts to silence their reality. They denounce that around 15% of national lands are subject to mining concessions, and that more than 3 million hectares will be explored for metal mining – of which approximately 400,000 hectares are in Indigenous territories." -- A translated statement by Acción Ecológica in Ecuador, in light of the national strikes. See the original statement in Spanish.