Thank you.
Since 1999, MiningWatch Canada has been working with mining-affected communities and indigenous peoples struggling to protect their human rights and their environment from egregious impacts and abuses by Canadian mining companies operating in Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region.
For over 20 years, we have been dealing with the brutal realities of violent evictions of indigenous peoples from their homes by mine personnel, shootings of local men and boys, and brutal rapes of women and girls by mine security, as well as the use of forced labour in places such as Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Guatemala and Eritrea.
We work with communities facing health crises and the loss of food security because of rivers and groundwater contaminated by mine waste, as well as the pollution of soil and air from mineral processing at mine sites. We grieve with communities over the loss of indigenous sacred sites and over the loss of life due to catastrophic tailings dam failures in places such as the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Argentina and the Philippines.
These environmental and human rights abuses have not diminished in the 23 years that I have been working at MiningWatch Canada. Year after year, the mining industry is expanding its global footprint—often in countries with weak governance—in search of new lucrative ore bodies, expanding into ever more remote and often indigenous territories and into critical ecosystems such as the Amazon, the paramos and glaciers. Year after year, we are confronted with new communities desperately seeking protection from the harm they've endured because of the operations of a Canadian exploration company or junior or senior mining company in places such as Kyrgyzstan, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico and small islands in Indonesia and the Pacific.
The common denominator that ties together these human rights and environmental abuses by Canadian mining companies operating overseas is a lack of accountability. We are not talking about a few bad apples here; we're talking about a systemic reality in which Canadian mining companies, large and small, are operating with effective impunity—impunity that enables and drives further abuses.
Since 1997, nine cases have been filed in Canadian courts against Cambior, Copper Mesa, Anvil, Hudbay, Tahoe and Nevsun for allegations arising from their overseas operations. These cases concern assaults, shootings, gang rapes of local indigenous peoples by mine security, the use of slave labour and the contamination of a river by mine waste.
These are just the tip of the iceberg of egregious harm inflicted, as it remains extremely difficult to overcome formidable legal hurdles such as forum non conveniens and the corporate veil to bring cases in Canada. The most recent case filed in Canada was just in November 2022, and is it against Barrick Gold, a member of the Mining Association of Canada. This is the third case filed against Barrick and its subsidiaries since 2015 on behalf of victims of violence by mine security and police guarding Barrick's North Mara gold mine in Tanzania. We're talking about the rape, killing and maiming of local Kuria people by mine security. These have been repeatedly reported since at least 2009.
Additionally, villagers are currently being forcibly evicted to make way for mine expansion. Under armed police guard, distraught parents and children look on in horror as their homes are bulldozed while their clothes are still drying on the line. There is no resettlement plan for these already vulnerable indigenous people, who now face homelessness and food insecurity.
Since 2007, five U.N. treaty bodies have focused specifically on harm caused by Canadian mining companies operating overseas and have reminded Canada of its duty to protect human rights at home and abroad. In 2016, the international Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asked Canada to “develop a legal framework that affords legal remedies to people who have been victims of activities of such corporations operating abroad.” Canada must finally take comprehensive and effective action.
We know what must be done: Canada must implement mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation, as detailed in private member's Bill C-262, tabled in March 2022. Canada must give the Canadian ombudsperson for responsible enterprise investigatory powers to compel witness testimony and documents, as committed to by the government in 2018 and as proposed by a majority of members of the foreign affairs committee in their report of June 2021.
Thank you.