(Cranbrook, B.C.) This week in Cranbrook, B.C. Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Michelle Mungall is hosting her counterparts from across the country for the annual Energy and Mines Ministers’ Conference. Environmental groups from across the province are questioning the celebration of the conference’s theme of competitiveness and innovation while B.C.’s government won’t address the water pollution flowing from mines around the province.

The Observatorio Minero Ambiental & Social del Norte de Ecuador (OMASNE) denounced today that the Canadian company, Cornerstone Resources (TSX: CGP), continues to sign agreements with landowners to continue their exploration efforts in the area of influence of the Los Cedros Protected Forest, despite the Provincial Court of Imbabura ruled the project to be in violation of the right of Environmental Consultation, and revoked their environmental permits. 

(Sydney/Ottawa) OceanaGold’s copper-gold mine in Didipio faces concerted opposition by local and indigenous Ifugao peoples living at its mine site in Didipio, Nueva Vizcaya, as well as from municipal and provincial elected officials. This clear lack of social licence across three relevant jurisdictions is reported to be one of the reasons the mine has not been successful in renewing its licence.

Canadian embassy staff in Africa and officials in Ottawa paid little attention to allegations of human rights abuses at a mine in Tanzania as they sought to aid Barrick Gold Corp. in a tussle with the east African country’s government, internal emails show. 

Acacia Mining, a U.K.-based subsidiary of Barrick Gold, has been accused by MiningWatch Canada, U.K.-based Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) and others of complicity in the deaths and injuries of scores of people living near the North Mara gold mine in the remote north of the country at the hands of its own private security forces and Tanzanian police.

(Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Mexico) The Canadian company Argonaut Gold intends to exploit its Cerro del Gallo project in the immediate vicinity of the Cradle of Independence. If realized, the project would encompass a total area of more than 20,000 hectares (494,210 acres) and the extracted minerals would be benefited with sodium cyanide by means of the heap leach technique that usually causes serious damage to the health of the nearby populations as well as the use and contamination of large amounts of water.

(Victoria/Vancouver, B.C.) As Taseko Mines once again attempts to force its way with an injunction to start drilling in Tŝilhqot’in ancestral territory at Fish Lake (Teztan Biny) without the consent of the Tŝilhqot’in Nation, a broad network of citizens, experts, and environmental organizations are calling for urgent reform of BC’s outdated mining laws. 

On July 3, 2019,the coordinator of the Maritimes - Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network delivered a letter signed by sixty-seven International and Guatemalan organizations to the Attorney General of the Guatemalan Public Ministry. In the letter, organizations expressed their solidarity and demanded that protective measures be guaranteed for Xinca lawyer Quelvin Jimenez as well as communities involved in the peaceful resistance against the Escobal mine.

(Williams Lake, BC) The Tŝilhqot’in Nation is assembling for a peaceful action to exercise their Aboriginal rights and ancestral laws in protecting Teẑtan Biny (Fish Lake) and Yanah Biny (Little Fish Lake), a place of profound cultural and spiritual significance for the Tŝilhqot’in people, from an extensive drilling program by Taseko Mines Ltd. (TML) in support of the rejected New Prosperity mine proposal.

On June 27, 2019, TML wrote to the Tŝilhqot’in Nation advising that it would mobilize heavy equipment, including logging and road-clearing equipment, starting July 2, 2019. TML also wrote to say that the ground disturbance work would begin on July 3, 2019. This is in direct violation of Tŝilhqot’in law; Taseko Mines Ltd. does not have Tŝilhqot’in Nation consent to undertake this work. The company’s refusal to consider the request by the Nation to halt the work program has forced the Tŝilhqot’in Nation to take action to protect its sacred site.

Negotiations between the world’s largest gold mining company and indigenous landowners in Papua New Guinea have broken down, leaving the future of a mine that’s produced twenty million ounces of gold in doubt.

Canadian company, Barrick, is under pressure to have its Porgera Joint Venture gold mine lease in Papua New Guinea renewed for another 20 years before the current agreement expires on the 16th of August 2019.

By Judith Lavoie

Study of four catastrophic dam collapses — including one at B.C.’s Mount Polley mine — finds bonus schemes encourage managers to take more risks in the name of short-term profits

Generous bonuses for mine managers, rewarding them for cutting costs or increasing production, are linked to tailings dam failures, a new research paper has found.