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
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