Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm a Ph.D. student from Toronto. I'm here because I believe we have a very serious and systemic problem. I also believe that Bill C-300 is a step towards addressing this problem.
For the past five years I've been researching activities surrounding Canadian mining companies operating abroad, with a specific interest in Central America. I've travelled to Guatemala and Honduras several times over the years, and I have found that people there are being seriously harmed by the activities of Canadian mining companies operating in their regions. This is engendering anger towards Canada and Canadians.
I have also produced documentaries to raise awareness about this problem and to represent the views of marginalized communities whose voices are not often heard, many of whom are very upset about the negative impacts they say they've felt as a result of the activities of Canadian mining companies operating near their homes.
My interest in this area began just over five years ago, when I found myself on the receiving end of rage. I was volunteering in Guatemala with a very small Canadian environmental NGO that establishes clean water projects in the developing world.
While there, three other Canadians and I were mistakenly presumed to be secretly working for a Canadian mining company. They thought we were pretending to be working for NGOs as a means of accessing their land to explore for possible mineral deposits. They were incredibly angry.
On this particular day, a local farmer had been killed in a protest against the Canadian-owned Marlin mine. In their eyes, we were representatives of a Canadian mining company. We were blamed for the death of this farmer and for forcing mining upon them. We almost became the target of an angry mob in a country where vigilante justice unfortunately still exists. Our lives were in danger and we were very lucky to escape. I am happy to provide further details if you're interested.
The following day, I contacted the Canadian embassy in Guatemala City to report that my colleagues and I were almost killed by virtue of being mistaken for representatives of a Canadian mining company. I asked what Canadian mining companies could possibly be doing in the region to cause such outrage.
I was told in no uncertain terms that Canadian mining companies have actually done no harm whatsoever; rather, they've been the target of misinformation campaigns initiated by radical left-wing activist environmental NGOs that brainwashed the poor, ignorant, illiterate campesinos into thinking that the Canadian mines will give them AIDS and unleash a monster from the lake.
This surprised me. I stated that I heard nothing about AIDS from the Guatemalans with whom I had spoken, and I certainly heard nothing about a monster coming out of the lake. What I had heard from local Guatemalans was that a Canadian open-pit gold mine was being constructed in the western highlands of the country. This is the Marlin mine, now owned by Goldcorp. People were outraged by the fact that they had not been previously consulted, as legally required.
I'd also heard that the Canadian company constructing this mine—it was Glamis Gold, which is now Goldcorp—had the same type of mine operating in neighbouring Honduras, the San Martin mine in Siria Valley, Honduras. I'd been told that since that mine opened, people reported dramatic changes in the region where the mine was operating. Due to the incredibly water-intensive mining process, rivers and wells had completely dried up. This devastated the primary economy of the region of 40,000 people, agriculture, and it caused a flood of young people to leave the region and to find work in the U.S.
People also told me that the water that had not dried up had become heavily polluted with cyanide and heavy metals. They blamed this for a rash of health problems, which they attributed to the new pollution since the inception of the mine. This included a dramatic increase in the rate of miscarriages both in people and in livestock.
People also feared the serious long-term consequences of ingesting water intoxified by heavy metals over an extended period of time. That includes cancer and liver disease. Many of these people, I should note, lacked access to adequate medical services and the means to buy purified water.
When I told the woman at the embassy about these concerns, I was told that it was all completely untrue. She told me that she had just returned from the region and had seen the mine with her very own eyes, and she could confirm that it was all perfectly fine. I inquired about the concerns regarding cyanide, which she dismissed by assuring me that cyanide really isn't that that harmful. She even said that it's found naturally in almonds.
When I hung up the phone, I felt more troubled than before I had called, because the problem now seemed to be bigger than the very serious allegations against a Canadian mining company. The problem seemed to include a Canadian government position that entirely supported Canadian industry while delegitimizing the concerns of affected communities.
The next year I returned to the region with video equipment to document what would transpire, to document the conditions in the Siria Valley in Honduras. What I saw was a far cry from what the Canadian embassy had told me. Everything was not at all fine. I encountered compelling evidence for virtually every concern that I'd heard raised by local Guatemalans. In fact, many of these concerns have subsequently been documented by world-renowned scientific authorities, including environmental engineer and hydrogeologist Professor Paul Younger from Newcastle University in the U.K.
As a Canadian citizen, I must tell you, I am deeply disturbed that the Canadian embassy was virtually indistinguishable from the PR outlet of a mining company. I began to understand why people in the region, whom I had met, often bitterly referred to the Canadian government as little more than an advocate for Canadian mining companies in the region that seemed to care very little about the well-being and legitimate concerns of the affected communities. “If they do care,” I was repeatedly asked, “why don't they do anything to address these serious problems?”
A documentary film of mine that is critical of Canadian mining was subsequently the target of a misinformation campaign from this very embassy. In January 2007, I filmed the forced evictions of five indigenous Mayan Q'eqchi communities from their ancestral lands in El Estor, in the eastern part of Guatemala.
The forcible evictions were carried out by hundreds of state police and military at the behest of Canadian mining company Skye Resources, which has since been purchased by Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals. Mining company employees took chainsaws and torches to people's homes while women and children stood by watching. In my written brief, I have further details about these evictions.
Skye Resources claimed that they maintained a peaceful atmosphere during this action. They deny any responsibility for any violence that may have ensued over the two-day evictions.
My video served to show that the evictions were anything but peaceful. It's now played at film festivals around the world and to date has been viewed online by over 150,000 people.
Shortly after the video began circulating online, the Canadian Ambassador to Guatemala at the time, Kenneth Cook, began spreading misinformation about it. Ambassador Cook stated that the video lacks credibility because the impoverished Mayan Q'eqchi woman in the video who complains about the forced evictions was actually an actress whom I had paid to perform in this manner, and furthermore, the photographs that I show in the video—some showing people's homes being burned to the ground and people in abject despair as they witness this destruction—were not at all from the evictions, as I claimed them to be, but rather, they were old photos from the internal conflict, which ended in 1996. He claimed that he had seen them many times over the years in many different contexts.
These allegations are very serious and they are entirely and unequivocally false. They portray me as a manipulative propagandist. They defend the mining company's position and they discredit the long-standing land claims, development, and human rights needs of the impoverished local Mayan Q'eqchi people. I am deeply concerned that his actions may be an example of a government that privileges the Canadian extractive industries operating abroad over concerns and well-being of local communities.
I should tell you that I'm currently suing the former ambassador for defamation. I should also tell you that I did not originally intend to sue. It was only after the embassy and the government failed—