By Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, March 4, 2025
Representatives from communities impacted by mining projects on Sami Indigenous territory in northern Norway, Cree Territory, Wet’suwet’en Territory, the Congo, Palestine, Sudan, the Philippines, and Chile came together alongside hundreds of Torontonians to protest the opening of the world’s largest mining convention this week in Toronto.
Marching behind a banner that read “Canadian Mining Kills, Destroys and Colonizes,” the crowd marched from the Toronto Stock Exchange to Front Street to ultimately disrupt and block the entrance of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre where the annual convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) was beginning.
Tens of thousands of mining industry players gather yearly at the PDAC Convention, together with company executives and representatives from over 100 countries to advance the interests of Canadian mining, globally. Companies promote their mining projects under exploration and in development, while governments boast of regulatory reforms to make mining easier and attract Canadian capital. Meanwhile, the people facing the devastating environmental and social consequences of these investments are left out.
The protest specifically pointed to the mining industry’s role in exacerbating global conflicts and making war possible, including Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians being carried out in Gaza. Modern weapons require significant quantities of metals and minerals, like the F-35 fighter jets Israel is using to bomb Gaza, each of which contain over 900lbs of rare earth elements. Several companies mining for rare earths are in attendance at PDAC this year, as are some of the world’s largest producers of aluminum, platinum, and cobalt – all necessary to conduct modern warfare.
“These mining companies are war profiteers. They make huge profits providing the raw materials for weapons of war. Canadian mining is complicit in extracting the materials needed for the weapons systems that are sold to Israel and that are being used in the ongoing genocide against our people in Palestine,” said Adham Diabas, a representative of the Palestinian Youth Movement.
Valeria Supelveda, an environmental educator from Chile and President of Parque Para Penco, is fighting to protect biodiversity and water in the face of threats from Aclara Resources’ proposed open-pit rare earths mine. “A boom in mining for rare earths is being justified under the guise of the energy transition, in response to a climate crisis caused by the Global North. But we know that rare earths are also being used for military purposes. I’ve traveled all the way from Chile to remind Aclara Resources that the people of Penco are fighting for life and stand firmly against this project. I ask the people of Canada to stand in solidarity with communities across Latin America and the world being harmed by war and by the mining industry that sustains it.”
“The Canadian mining industry is increasingly a war industry, advancing mining projects to meet the material needs of weapon producers,” said Rachel Small, an organizer with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (MISN) and World BEYOND War. “Canadian mining companies are complicit in both the bloodshed caused by those weapons and in taking advantage of global conflict to advance their mining interests. Impacted communities have travelled thousands of kilometres to make sure that these companies’ track record of causing violence, alongside environmental destruction, human rights abuse, and land theft, follow them into the PDAC Convention.”
“Every day I’m receiving phone calls and videos of dead bodies and injured people from my community back home in the DRC,” said Kashoro Nyenyezi, PHD candidate at University of Toronto and founder of Helping Hand for Survivors, Inc. in the DRC. “The mining industry is at the heart of that. Canadian and the US mining companies can’t feign innocence in the slaughter of civilians in the Congo. They’re not bringing stability; they’re exacerbating these conflicts and profiting off of bloodshed. My family has faced the violence of Canadian mining firsthand and was evicted from our land in Eastern DRC. The situation has only gotten much worse. The people of DRC need peace now.”
Nisrin Elamin, a member of the Sudan Solidarity Collective, spoke during the protest about Canadian mining companies in Sudan: “Lundin Group, one of this year’s Gold Sponsors at PDAC, not only has blood on its hands but it co-created the conditions that sparked a genocide in Western Sudan and escalated the civil war in South Sudan. And the Lundin Group is not alone, they are part of a consortium of mining, oil and weapons manufacturing companies that are seeing their stocks rise as civilians in Gaza, Sudan, and Congo are being murdered.”
Delegates traveled to Toronto from Norway in order to confront key investors such as Wheaton Metals – one of the PDAC Convention’s patron sponsors this year. Wheaton Precious Metals is a major investor in Canada’s Blue Moon Metals, which recently acquired the contested Repparfjord project in Northern Norway. The project has been facing staunch resistance from Sami Indigenous reindeer herding communities and environmental activists for years.
Beaska Niillas, land defender and member of the Sami Parliament said, “We have traveled all this way to bring a message for the Canadian mining industry. Our land is sacred, and the specific project we are opposing is a threat to our culture and livelihoods. And the project is the most controversial in Norway. It will not happen.”
Sami Lawyer Ragnhild Marit Sara said, “This mine threatens to destroy our indigenous peoples’ ancestral land, pollute our environment, and jeopardize our culture, livelihood, and our traditional way of life. Our delegation from Sápmi is here to send Blue Moon Metals the clear message that by acquiring these mining rights in Sápmi, they are about to violate the human rights of the affected Sami people. We are here to warn them they are wasting both their time and money. We will never give our consent to their project on our land, and a longstanding legal fight is to be expected.”´
Viviana Herrera, Latin America Program Coordinator with MiningWatch Canada, said, “We see a clear pattern of human rights abuse perpetrated by Canadian mining companies across the world, but also a clear pattern of strong local opposition. For all of the companies networking this week inside the PDAC Convention, there are communities speaking out against those projects, protecting the land, their water, and their lives from these projects. All of us out here in Toronto today are here in solidarity, reminding executives and investors alike that community demands for accountability in the face of industry violence cannot and will not be ignored.”
