Canadian firms dominate mining activities in Africa – and have a bad human rights record

Each year, a significant number of these are accused of environmental and human rights abuses, often in developing countries where the government is weak or corrupt.

Their behaviour is so bad that in some places, according to the Toronto Star, the word “Canada” is so reviled that travelling Canadians mask their citizenship by wearing, of all things, American flags on their caps and backpacks.

The Canadian government has struggled for a decade with how to hold mining firms accountable for their actions overseas. So far its attempts have proved inadequate.

It has disregarded repeated calls for an independent investigation into the 1996 Bulyanhulu gold mine incident.

In 2001, eyewitness accounts, family testimony, photos and police videotape uncovered by the Lawyer’s Environmental Action Team (LEAT) of Tanzania corroborated long-standing allegations that employees of the Canadian-owned Kahama Mining Corporation Ltd (KMCL) in conjunction with the Tanzanian police, buried over 50 artisanal miners by bulldozing over the entrances to the shafts in which they worked at the Bulyanhulu gold mine in 1996.

In 2002 it ignored a United Nations report called on it to investigate the actions of seven Canadian companies accused of illegally exploiting resources from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Two years later, 73 people were killed by the Congolese military, which used vehicles, supplies, pilots and drivers from a Canadian-Australian mining company to transport them to the site of the massacre.

According to MiningWatch’s Jamie Kneen, Anvil Mining had been forced to shut down production at their Dikulushi Mine when a so-called “rebellion” took place in a nearby village; a rebellion of “10 to 12” villagers that had nothing to do with mining. Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC), of the DRC government, provided with trucks and logistics by Anvil, proceeded to seize the town and then went door-to-door “raping and pillaging.”

As recent revelations from Uganda demonstrate, these companies are not above signing secret agreements or dumping toxic waste into rivers as they did in Tanzania.

Denis Tougas, director of the L’Entraide missionnaire (L’EMI) in Montréal, notes that “it’s a safe bet that Canada’s image as a moderate country and disinterested development partner in Africa is now thoroughly outdated.”