In 2010, in the run up to the narrow defeat of the Responsible Mining Act (proposed as a Private Member’s Bill), a copy of a report commissioned (but never released) by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) was leaked to the Toronto Star. The easily drawn conclusion of the report was that “Canadian mining companies are far and away the worst offenders in environmental, human rights and other abuses around the world.”
In water-poor countries around the world, Canadian mining companies are sucking up – and poisoning – water desperately needed for agriculture, cooking and basic survival. (Every year the global mining industry dumps more than 180 million tonnes of hazardous mining waste into the world’s ocean, lakes, rivers and streams. That waste contains dozens of dangerous chemicals, including arsenic, cyanide, lead and mercury.)
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