Canada

An investigation from BBC’s Panorama uncovers how British power company Drax is linked to forests being logged in British Columbia, Canada. Drax switched from burning coal to burning wood pellets, which gave the company millions of taxpayers’ money from “green” subsidies.

In 2009, the global food corporation Unilever sold its palm oil subsidiary Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC), in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to the Canadian company Feronia.

2 November 2016. European and US development funds are bankrolling palm oil company Feronia Inc despite land and labour conflicts at its plantations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). New information now raises questions as to whether the Canadian-based company misused millions of taxpayer dollars destined for international aid by way of companies connected to a high-level DRC politician.

The report is also available in German, in Lingala and Swahili.

The Unist’ot’en camp in North-Western British Colombia, Canada, has since 2011 been maintaining a check-point to control access through their territory to stop government and industry plans to build several gas and oil pipelines.

The Matsés indigenous people are fighting back to stop Pacific Rubiales Energy, a Canadian oil and gas company, from destroying their territory and endangering their lives and forests. One of the company’s exploration blocks, on the Brazilian border, is in an area proposed for designation as a national reserve, theoretically to protect the Matsés. Another block overlaps with land officially demarcated as the territory of this indigenous people. But the Matsés are standing up against the company.

   

 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a highly secretive and expansive free trade agreement between the United States and twelve Pacific Rim countries, including Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and Australia. Leaked text reveals that the TPP would empower corporations to directly sue governments in private and non-transparent trade tribunals over laws and policies that corporations allege reduce their profits. Legislation designed to address climate change, curb fossil fuel expansion and reduce air pollution could all be subject to attack by corporations as a result of TPP.

The aboriginal grass-roots movement Idle No More cut off access to the gold-copper-zinc mine of HudBay Minerals Inc, a Toronto-based mid-tier miner, in Lalor for several hours in early March. The group seeks to renegotiate old mining agreements and seize more control over mining developments, whether they are on lands designated as native reserves or not. "We've existed in this territory for millennia. We don't have a land claim - it's beyond that, actually. Our rights exist throughout all of our territories," said Arlen Dumas, chief of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation.