Canada treats mining companies like the goose that laid the golden egg. What we get in return looks more like a goose egg.

Mining enjoys massive government support in Canada. Politically, it’s treated as a preferred development option for remote communities and Indigenous peoples. Former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall once said, “The best program for First Nations and Métis people in Saskatchewan is not a program at all—it's [uranium mining company] Cameco.”

When I mention that the global mining industry is eyeing the deep seabed as the next frontier in mining I am commonly met with gasps of disbelief and dismay. That gut reaction is often followed up with sensible exclamations about the fact that the world’s oceans are already overstressed by contaminants from human activity, such as plastics, and by overfishing, and, from those in the know, by acidification. Unsurprisingly, these apprehensions do not factor into the rapacious ambitions of industry pitchers for deep-sea mining, nor do they—another gasp of dismay—appear to temper the outright enthusiasm for this new form of mining shown by some highly placed officials in relevant UN bodies.

(Ottawa) On October 14th, after several months of failed negotiations between Canadian company Teck Resources (TECK.A)’s Chilean subsidiary “Teck Carmen de Andacollo” and the Carmen de Andacollo Miners’ Union, the union declared a general strike against the company, paralyzing the company’s only operational mine in Chile. 

A plan to update the province’s antiquated Mines Act will bring more independent oversight of mines but doesn’t address lax regulations that leave responsibility for clean-up costs, such as in the Mount Polley mine disaster, in the hands of taxpayers

Judith Lavoie 

Proposed reforms to B.C.’s mining act are a positive step but taxpayers are still on the hook for costly clean-up costs, according to Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre.

The events of October 2019 dealt a hard blow to the economic plans of Ecuador’s elites, in particular their programme for eliminating fuel subsidies. But for the people these dates will be remembered as beautiful days of solidarity, of re-encounter with living traditions, of mutual recognition among equals, and of respect for differences.

On October 14th, a US foundation, Defend them All (DTA), sent an open letter to Canadian mining company INV Metals urging the company to abandon its activities in Ecuador following a field visit to the Kimsakocha páramo in south-central Ecuador.

A Peruvian court has ruled that police and the Ministry of the Interior acted with bias as a result of a security contract between Canadian mining company Hudbay Minerals and national police when they illegally detained former Latin America Program Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada, Jen Moore (now an Associate Fellow with the Mining and Trade project at the Institute for Policy Studies), and U.S. investigative journalist John Dougherty in late April 2017.

Over 250 organizations from around the world express their solidarity with Ecuadorians in a joint letter published today, opposing IMF-imposed austerity measures and the Ecuadorian government’s firm pro-extractivism agenda. Eleven days of mass protests led by Indigenous and labour organizations brought thousands to the streets and ended on Sunday, October 14, when the government revoked IMF-sponsored Decree 883.

(Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto) More than twenty Canadian labour unions, not-for-profit, and civil society organizations today released an open statement to express their solidarity and support to Indigenous, labour, campesino and civil-society organizations currently engaged in nationwide protests against the IMF-imposed economic austerity package. 

Since October 2, Indigenous organizations, along with trade unions, social movements and peasant organizations, have been demonstrating across Ecuador against a set of economic austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international lending institutions that have resulted in: increases of up to 120 percent in fuel prices; labour reforms that undermine labour protections in Ecuador, such as turning good private sector employment into precarious jobs, and the downward “harmonization” of wages resulting in a 20 percent cut in wages for new hires in t