OPINIONS: O’Regan’s relationship with mining lobby is too cozy – by Donna Ashamock and Ugo Lapointe (iPolitics.ca – July 7, 2021)

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Donna Ashamock is an Eeyou/Inninew (Cree) member affiliated with Fort Albany First Nation and is co-chair of MiningWatch Canada. Ugo Lapointe is the Canada program coordinator at MiningWatch Canada and an adviser to the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development’s 2019 audit of the protection of Canadian waters from mine effluents.

By recently co-signing a series of opinion pieces that ran across the country, federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan has crossed an ethical line.

In the letters, O’Regan joined the CEO of Canada’s largest mining lobby group to promote the interests of the very same industry the minister is supposed to regulate on behalf of all Canadians.

Under cover of the need to supply materials for a “green economy,” the letters use overstated rhetoric commonly employed by the Mining Association of Canada to further its interests in extracting more raw materials at the expense of alternative solutions.

Not once do the letters mention the potential of policies for recycling, a circular economy, or mineral efficiency to help supply those materials instead of digging more holes in the ground.

Nor do the letters acknowledge the increasing social and environmental costs associated with mining raw materials, including to climate, water, biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples.

For the rest of this article: https://ipolitics.ca/2021/07/07/oregans-relationship-with-mining-lobby-is-too-cozy/