(Ottawa) The environmental, social, and climate impacts of mining metals to meet the demands of the booming renewable energy economy are the focus of an international conference opening today in Ottawa. The non-profit group MiningWatch Canada aims to highlight the high environmental and social costs of mining and identify ways to reduce demand for newly mined metals as the world moves urgently away from fossil fuel energy.

Statement leading up to the COP25 in Santiago de Chile (now relocated to Madrid, Spain)

September 26-28, Santiago, Chile

On the morning of the annual Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, in February 2017, a group of samba dancers stood solemnly in front of a massive parade float depicting five venomous snakes, their forked tongues protruding from the back of a bearded man with bloodshot eyes.

While other jurisdictions like Quebec and Alaska require mines to post full remediation costs as a condition of approval, B.C. rules allow environmental liabilities from mining projects — which are often on Indigenous lands — to fall to the taxpayer

Judith Lavoie, Nov 8, 2019

The First Nations Energy and Mining Council has added its voice to increasingly insistent calls for B.C. to toughen up mining rules and make polluters pay.

On November 3rd, Nelso Enrique Carvajal Pizarro, a 59 year old community member in Manquehua, Chile, was shot by a security guard associated with the mining company “Tres Valles” (MTV). MTV is in Canadian company Sprott Resource Holdings’ investment portfolio, with SRHI owning 70% of the Chilean company. MTV operates the MTV copper mining complex, which houses two copper deposits.

A mysterious new group claims ‘life is getting back to normal’ at the site of the 2014 Mount Polley tailings pond collapse — one of Canada’s largest-ever environmental disasters — while the growing volume of mine waste in Quesnel Lake and a revealing government inspection report point to continuing concerns on the ground

Sarah Cox, Nov 6, 2019

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.