Wednesday, December 9, 2015

A Tarnished Canadian Reputation Creates An Unfamiliar Shame

Recently, I got the chance to go to an area in North Tanzania, Mara Region, where a Canadian owned mining company Barrick Gold’s subsidiary, Acacia Mining, has given 14 women out of court compensation packages for sexual assault allegations who can now not take them to court, 16 have died in the past 6 years and one man has become disabled from being shot in the spine. I believed Canadians had a good reputation around the world for being fair and just people, but unfortunately, Canada’s name is being shamed through our lackluster mining regulations. I’ve never been worried about telling people where I’m from until now. In my pre-departure briefing for this internship, one former intern actually warned us about Canada’s reputation after she was met with cold distaste by someone she met for the first time because this person’s family was pushed off their ancestral land for Canadian mining operations. Canada must stop allowing companies to tarnish our reputation as a people with the fact that they are owned/registered as Canadian which will be difficult as 75% of the world’s mining companies are registered in Canada(1), and are known as some of the worst in the world for human rights abuses. Canadians are not their mining corporations but we’re also, in my perception, not doing near enough about it. There are articles pointing out that Canadian mining companies are dispossessing thousands of people from their land making them homeless(2), there is also a Facebook group about the lies people were told by Canadian mining companies to get them off their land in neighbouring Zambia and were then locked out(3) then there’s the fact that people from different countries are suing Canadian mining corporations through our courts for their corporate atrocities. On top of that, Canadian mining companies are suing governments like El Salvador for $110 million for not issuing them a permit for a mine that doesn’t even meet their environmental standards(4).  If you value your reputation as a Canadian, and the fact that you don’t have to hide it when travelling, let’s put Canadian Foreign Mining Policy back on the agenda. Thanks for reading and try to promote Canadian accountability in foreign mining any way you can so that we can be welcomed everywhere once again and put a stop to the impunity that Canadian mining corporations are taking.


FYI: Some of my sources say British owned mine, but the parent company is headquartered in Toronto. In this article it says Acacia Mining is 64% owned by Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold on Nov 27, 2014 http://www.mining.com/african-barrick-is-history-changes-name-to-acacia-mining-31334/ but the percentage might have changed since then.

Here are more of my sources if you want to read more