The Canadian Mining Industry is notorious for its patterns of aiding in regime change, displacing Indigenous peoples from their lands, and the horrific human rights abuses that go with all of that.

Activist and author Grahame Russell of Rights Action shares his firsthand experience with a landmark legal case. One that exposed HudBay's use of sexual violence, destruction and death at the Felix mine in Guatemala, but through Canadian courts. Its a story of perseverance, grassroots resourcefulness and pure courage in the face of corporate giants working hand-in-hand with governments, including our own.

Its also a discussion on Imperialism, Canada's role in the continued theft of indigenous land and what we can do about it.

Hosted by: Jessa McLean and Santiago Helou Quintero

Call to Action: When we asked our guest for a call to action for this episode, Grahame's reply was "Free Palestine'. We'd also encourage folks to read the entire 13 Giants Report.

Related Episodes:

• Canada's Colonial Imagination (Oct. 2023) a discussion that ties modern day foreign policy and our own history of genocide, with professor Tyler Shipley.
• Lessons from: South America, (Dec. 2022) on social movements in Venezuela and drawing comparisons to the Canadian situation.

More Resources:

• Mining in Canada: Latest News and Updates | The Narwhal
• Who pays for the death and violence at Canadian mine in the Congo? - rabble.ca
• Mining Watch Canada - More on Canadian Mining Industry
• Guatemalan Plaintiffs reach fair and reasonable settlement in Canadian mining lawsuits — Klippensteins Barristers & Solicitors
• REPORT: 13 Brave Giants — Rights Action

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Greetings, friends. My name is Jess McLean, and I'm here to provide you with some blueprints

of disruption. This weekly podcast is dedicated to amplifying the work of activists, examining

power structures, and sharing the success stories from the grassroots. Through these discussions,

we hope to provide folks with the tools and the inspiration they need to start to dismantle

capitalism, decolonize our spaces, and bring about the political revolution that we know

we need. We often talk about how Canadian imperialism does not receive the criticism it deserves,

and I can think of no better example than the Canadian mining industry. The large majority

of the world's mining companies are based in Canada and the extent of their human rights

abuses go shamefully under-reported. Worse yet is the failure of our legal system to hold

them accountable and deliver justice for those who have been wronged. Our guest today, Graham

Russell, is here to talk about one of the few times a Canadian mining company was actually

held accountable and the work it took to get there. This conversation opened up so many

questions for us and its implications get to the very root of the struggle against imperialism.

Welcome to the studio, Graham. Can you introduce yourself, please? Well, firstly, thanks for

having me in, Graham Russell. I'm here because I work with the a small organization called

Rights Action. It's uh legally incorporated in Canada and the US. And it's just a small

NGO and we do the main focus of our work is in Central America and particularly Honduras

and Guatemala. And then as part of the work we do, and a lot of that will come out in

this discussion, I presume, we focus all of our education and activism on how Canada and

the US. uh both our governments and our private sectors are often part of the problems. And

so we bring the stories home, like this mining story we'll talk about, but we sort of tell

folks, we educate folks to say, we're not helping them with their problems over there, we're

working on our problems that are taking place over there. And we need to understand what

is our role in Canada and the US government policies or private sector. in sort of creating,

causing, and or benefiting from all of these harms. So that's sort of the working model

that we apply to all the land defense struggles, human rights defense struggles that we support

in Honduras and Guatemala. This particular case came to a legal challenge. In 2013, you were

given clearance to launch a civil suit here in Canada. but for human rights abuses that

took place in Guatemala. So like those are the problems. I mean, just a smidgen of the problems

that you're talking about. And you say part of the problem, like they are the problem,

not just part of the problem, but so the legal challenge, do you want to kind of just give

us a little bit of a summary on, because the report that we will link to this episode. gives

a lot of details, right? We won't be able to provide folks with all of the details here

today, but you're probably talking to folks that perhaps aren't even aware of just how

prolific our mining industry is, let alone the level of violence that you say is almost

predictable and logical pattern of Canadian mining. think, cause like reading... I get

to the second paragraph of your report and it's like a gut punch on just the incidents that

you're covering with this one legal challenge, right? So like be prepared to be shocked folks,

but if you can give us just a kind of a cursory overview. It's like that question I could just

tell the whole story. uh For folks that follow up on this, do recommend the report. I think

it's easy reading and it moves along and it includes all or most of the pieces that I

think are worth addressing. The two lawyers on the case and a few other trusted people

who've been involved from the beginning have read it a number of times and agree. The

report itself is a very easy reading, but summary report of all the different pieces. In many

ways, not that everyone will know what this means, this is a very typical sort of mining

resistance struggle. So at once it's sort of a human rights defense struggle, a land and

territory defense struggle, and a environmental defense struggle. And it's taking place in

a context of a global South country like Guatemala. What are endemic in a country like Guatemala

are racism against the indigenous people. exploitation and impoverishment of the majority population,

then repression, political violence, and then systemic corruption and impunity. And

I know that that's a mouthful, but it sets the stage because one thing that I've learned

over all these years of working with Central America is this is not a case of uh one bad

apple that HUDBAE Minerals, the company in this case, was a bad corporate actor in an otherwise

sort of healthy situation between a rich, powerful, global North country, Canada, and quite a dominated

and uh exploited global South country like Guatemala. This stuff happens all the time in many

different sectors of the global economy. Justin Wright's actions work in Honduras and Guatemala

alone. We deal with similar types of abuses that I'll talk about. in the ag industry sector,

so agricultural production for export, fruits and bananas, African palm, coffee, et cetera.

These types of harms and violations take place in the uh tourism industry, particularly in

Honduras, where we're working with an indigenous Carifina people whose lives and lands are

being devastated by the global tourism industry. what is becoming increasingly well known

in Canada, slowly there's a trickle up effect going on with this type of activism related

to mining. Canada, it happens prominently and regularly in the mining industry in many countries

around the world, particularly countries of the global South, many countries across Africa,

many countries across Latin America, et cetera. And the patterns are almost always the same.

And then the result is always the same. In this particular case, the reason why we start the

report focusing on why this was predictable is that the very same violations, which are

very serious, gang rapes of Indigenous women, targeted killing of an Indigenous leader, and

then the gratuitous shooting and paralyzing of a young man. I'll come back to that. these

are the... the 13 victims that became plaintiffs in the Hudbay lawsuits. And this is in a certain

region of Guatemala, the Eastern region, and they are the Mayan Ketchee people. But this

mining story didn't begin with Hudbay um in 2004, it began with Inco, a hugely well, a

very well-known Canadian company um a few decades ago, international nickel company at the time

in the 60s, it was like one of the biggest mining companies in the world. They started this very

mine site. It's called the Phoenix Mine. And there's a very brutal backstory at this very

same mine site in the 70s and 80s, the 70s and early 1980s. And many of the same types

of violations took place. All covered and shrouded in sort of political repression, military

backed government. corruption and impunity. So there was forced evictions of Indigenous

K'e'k'i people from their lands. There was targeted killing of community leaders. There is direct

links between Inco's mining company at the time and one of the most well-known and horrific

massacres in recent Guatemala history, the Panzos Massacre. I address that in the book a bit.

I didn't know this until I started working out there in 2004. This is the backstory we learned

once we started going there in 2004. So everything that happens from 2004 forward is almost a

repeat of what happened in the 60s and 70s because the political, legal, economic conditions of

Guatemala haven't changed one iota since that time. And certainly Canadian corporate interests

and the power and wealth of the Canadian government hasn't changed one iota since that time. And

so there's just a new wave of mining that kicks off in the late 90s and early 2000s. And that's

where a group like Rights Action comes in. That's where I come in, in 2004, in this particular

region. And that's when I start to learn the backstory. And to connect a dot, which is kind

of depressing, but very telling, is that 11 of the plaintiffs in the Hudbay lawsuits or

indigenous K'e'k'i women who were gang raped during the whole scale destruction of their

village called Lote Ocho. uh A hundred very humble homes were burnt to the ground, chopped

to the ground, uh chainsawed to the ground by hundreds of police, soldiers, and private security

guards on January 17th, 2007. And as part of this brutal destruction of their entire

village and way of life, uh they carried out gang rapes at the same time. We can come

back to that. I'm gonna throw this back to you guys shortly. But in that village called

Lote Ocho, a majority of those villagers lost family members in the Panzos massacre 30 years

before. So we would go on delegation visits, I'd bring in journalists, I'd bring in study

groups. And somewhere in the meeting, I would say, so put up your hands, how many people

in this community lost family members in the Panzos massacre? And a majority of the community

members put up their hands. An uncle, an aunt, a grandparent, a cousin, a grandfather, something

like that. And so everything is sort of a repetition of the past because none of the underlying

conditions have changed one bit. And Hudbay, and the predecessor company, Sky Resources,

they sort of amalgamated and become one company. They walked into this and they know the backstory.

It's all been well published and documented. So they just pick up this same mine in 2004

and start doing many of the same things all over again. I'll leave it with this final point.

The only thing, on a certain level, the only thing that fundamentally changed in this situation

is there's more critical awareness going on in a country like Canada about the impact of

our mining companies around the world. There's more activist groups on the ground, groups

like Rights Action on the ground who are there present to get involved in supporting the um

community defenders in their mining resistance struggles. And that starts to change the power

dynamic just ever so slightly on the ground and it starts to make a difference. That's

some power dynamic, though. You know, reading through the report, you're up against giants,

like not to glorify them. know, Hudson's Bay is a Canadian uh icon amongst, you know, other

things. Inco and its rich history and oh massive law firms in Toronto, Fasken-Martino. um It's

incredible the amount of resources that were likely lodged against you just from the Canadian

perspective. But knowing this is like a global pattern over and over again makes it even

more incredible to think of the impunity that they've operated with for so long that you're

starting to push up against. um What did you name your report? 13 brave giants. I for some

reason, that's not my note. It's the best title in the world and I'll tell you why. But the

subtitle is how we won the Hudbay Minerals lawsuits and the minor Pettier criminal trial in Guatemala

and at what cost because it even choosing to proceed with the justice struggles in Canada.

And then there was a parallel criminal trial in Guatemala. made matters worse in certain

ways because of uh the threats and violence that came with it, particularly for the plaintiffs

on the ground in Guatemala. So it was an amazing struggle. It was a courageous struggle, particularly

by the 13 plaintiffs and their families. And we did win in the end. It's sort of uh a qualified

win because it's civil lawsuits and it's financial reparations for the victims and their families.

And honestly, don't think Hudbay really cares about this that much. When it comes right

down to it, it's just chump change is a bit uh bit flippant, but it's just a small amount

of money for a company like Hudbay. But uh we did win, but it did come at a cost. And

then during the struggle during the years, and this is part of the story that I said out

in the report, we received huge amounts of grassroots support, not just the plaintiffs in Guatemala.

with uh groups like Rights Action and then other groups like Breaking the Silence, an activist

NGO out of Nova Scotia and other groups, uh Mining and Justice Solidarity Network in Toronto,

Misson, did a lot of activism, educational activism in Toronto around the time of the

hearings. So we got a lot of uh collective grassroots support, North and South. And in the middle

of the lawsuits in Toronto, when plaintiffs had to come North at a certain point, to participate

in uh examinations for discovery as part of the legal process, which are actually more

widely known as depositions, on-the-record depositions. A local Honduran Canadian activist, Pati

Flores, who's also an artist, just came up with that beautiful painting that's on the cover.

It's the most beautiful, it's my favorite painting in life because I was involved in the struggle.

So they are the 13 brave giants in this case. And we were able to put together sort of a

pretty solid core team, receiving tons of support from many different places. And we were able

to stay together for the 15 years as I think, I'm very much of the opinion that Hudbay not

just was fighting this legally, but they were trying to grind us down financially and wear

out. the already impoverished plaintiffs. And let me just harp on that point a bit.

These are subsistence living victims before the harms have begun. And by subsistence economy,

they're people who live on the edge of very serious poverty all the time. So when a bad

year of drought comes, ah drought, hunger will increase in the region. There's no other.

social services to support the poor in a country like Guatemala, but let alone many countries

around the world. So they're called subsistence farmers. They live off their land. And what

they produce is what they get to eat and try and make it last for the whole length of the

year, especially through the dry seasons. And if the men of the family go out and look for

work, they're going to be getting low paid exploitative labor somewhere for three months to bring home

a little bit of cash. So the notion of subsistence farming is widely known in the global south.

That's who they were before the mining harms began. So then their situation of poverty was

thrown off a cliff when the 11 women and their entire village was destroyed and burnt to

the ground and they never got it back. So they're now scratching out a living, living with family

members and cousins and whoever they can scratch out a living with. Angelica Chalk is one of

the plaintiffs, her husband, who was a teacher and got a very low income, but had a steady

income. He's killed. So her situation goes down the tubes. Herman Chook, the man in the wheelchair

was a subsistence campesino himself, and he was the one source of sort of income for his

family. He's incapacitated. He's in a wheelchair in the middle of nowhere in rural Guatemala

and scratching out a living. So there's situation of poverty. was worsened considerably just

by the harms in 2007, eight and nine. And then I think there was sort of probably not in

writing somewhere and I could never prove this, but I suspect uh Hudbay took certain decisions

and their lawyers and their brain trust in Guatemala to say, you know, let's just try and drag this

on a bit and see if the plaintiffs and their lawyers and their support groups like Rights

Action can stay with us because they had endless financial resources to. to fight the Hudbay

lawsuits and then the minor pediatrial in Guatemala. Graham, I just want to ask, because I know

a lot of people aren't going to be familiar with this, what is the scale of mining companies

that are based off in Canada? Because I know it's a very large number. And what are some

of the particular challenges then with holding them accountable legally given that they're

operating around the world? I think the scale I'll beg off answering in a bit like clearly

anyone who wants to follow up on the mining industry writ large in a country like Canada

should follow the work of mining watch Canada out of Ottawa. They are go to group and they've

been at this and they have massive sort of resources on their website. They've been doing

this for 30 years and they weren't directly involved in these particular struggles, but

I got to know their work through our work with mining resistance struggles in Guatemala and

Honduras, which are just two countries, two small countries in the whole big picture.

So Mining Watch is the go-to group and they, and as mining resistance activism has increased

over the last 20 and 30 years in Canada, other groups have cropped up and started writing

their own reports. And so by begging off the answer, what I mean to say is they have all

the statistics on the number of Canadian mining companies, juniors and senior large mining

companies operating in how many countries around the world at any given time, such that Canada

calls itself and prides itself on being the mining capital of the world. And so through

my work with Rights Action and Guatemala Honduras, we've worked on six different mining resistance

struggles. And as I said at the outset, they're no better or no worse than so many others around

the world. In terms of bringing the lawsuits, the biggest, besides getting into the resource

differential that we've already alluded to, the biggest challenge is that the Canadian

system writ large, however you want to call it, the Canadian establishment, but that coming

together of our political, economic, corporate and legal interests have never permitted such

lawsuits in the past. So we get to the year 2010 and there's never been a lawsuit even

in civil law, leaving aside criminal law and there's still no, there's no real way to hold

our companies, whatever the industry they're in, tourism, mining, oil and gas, let alone

military interventions around the world, there's no way to hold ourselves criminally accountable

in Canada if and when our government and or private sector commit crimes in other countries.

And we may come to one of these examples in Guatemala related to both HADBE but also

another company, Gold Corp. So there's still almost complete impunity, i.e. immunity from

liability in Canada for crimes that our companies directly commit. or indirectly commit. It

had never been done on the civil law side, and you'd have to speak with our lawyers, Corey

Wanlis and Murray Klippenstein, who can tell you the back story there of previous attempts

in Canadian law by other activist lawyers, other good lawyers, and in other countries who tried,

and then they failed because invariably this court or that court or the other court said,

no, Canada's not the right jurisdiction. In our lawsuits, was sort of, there was sort

of um a zeitgeist, like a coming together of a lot of good folks, increasing energy in Canada,

uh increasing awareness in Canada, that we have a mining problem, increasing awareness trickling

up through the activists and all the grassroots activism that went on for decades, mining watch,

the little bit, the two bit groups like Rights Action, Misson. the breaking the silence, et

cetera, many others, trickle up activism and getting nowhere fast because nothing is being

done in Canada. There's virtually no political oversight in parliament except for one or

two one-off politicians would do something and try and bring some political oversight

through parliamentary committees. And then there was just no legal oversight and the media plays

a role of typical role of really not covering addressing and reporting on these issues

in the depth and breadth that they merit. So that's the context. And then Corey and Murray,

Corey Wanus and Murray Clevenstein come along and I've met them actually before and I've

met them in conferences and they're like, we're looking for a case where we could try one more

time to break through the wall of impunity. And they reached out after the assassination,

targeted killing of Adolfo Ish. that we'd been working on for five years and reporting on.

And I had a trusted relationship in that part of Guatemala for the previous five years. And

they said, Graham, we're interested in that. Do you think we could start a process with

the widow, Angelica Choc, to see if she would be interested in filing a negligence civil

lawsuit in Canada against Hudbay for the killing of her husband? So that kicked off this process.

And it's summarized in the report, but the first three years, the first year was all pre-lawstutes

discussions with Angelica's family. And then like anywhere around the world, there's just

so much other violence that has been committed. when I would be telling them or Corey would

come on a trip with me and we'd say, well, what about Herman? He's in a wheelchair just over

there. He got shot that same day. Mm-hmm, could look into it. Well, what about the rape of

the women who got brutalized two years before? And Rights Action's been working on both these

issues, providing grassroots funding for the victims, doing the activism, documenting this

stuff. So we had good trusting relationships, and we knew how to deal with these communities,

and they knew us. At the end of the first year, That's when it wasn't just Angelica Chalk signing

on, but Herman Chubb, the young man who was shot and then left paralyzed. And then very

amazingly, the 11 women took the decision to say, yes, we'd like to try these lawsuits as

well. And then Corey Murray had to take their own decision and say, how much can we take

on? This has never been done in Canada before. How much can we take on? The long and the short

of it is that Three different lawsuits were filed dealing with these 13 plaintiffs. Then

there was two years of what are called pretrial motions to dismiss. This was ultimately the

key novel battle because this battle had been tried before until finally they got to the

ruling of a judge who said, no jurisdiction in Canada, go take this over to Guatemala.

And that's what changed in July of 2013. when finally a Canadian judge looked at the whole

thing and went, of course, these should be heard in Canada. Correct. That was actually the

legal precedent. That set the precedent that opened the door and made the Hudbay lawsuits

famous. And it actually started to get us some mainstream media coverage for the first

time. And I don't want to thank the mainstream media because they should be writing on these

issues all along, which they don't. But they started covering this story because it was

novel. And then there was some good reporters who wanted to dig a little bit deeper, um individual

reporters. So that raised the profile of the Hudbay lawsuits and things just started to

move forward and gather energy. then the 11 years of legal slogging started from 2013

right through to 2024. I'm just chuckling because you say this breakthrough moment happened and

I keep having to remind myself you're talking about over 10 years ago. And the settlement

doesn't actually happen until October 2024, correct? Well, that's it because how do they

change strategies? They fought hard to try and have these thrown out of Canada. They're called

pre-trial motions to dismiss. Dear Canadian court, before you even read that stuff, they

should not be held here. They should be in Guatemala because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well,

that blah, blah, blah is important. Why don't they want it? Why do they want to it to Guatemala?

As it happened in other cases around the world, because they know they won't admit it. Like

if you read the websites of the Canadian government or the mining industry, and I'm simplifying

this a bit, but they would say, We are working in Guatemala according to the rule of law.

We are bringing development there to help the poor because they need jobs. are, Canadian

government has full diplomatic relations with the democratically elected government of Guatemala.

I'm simplifying a bit, but not much. That is classic sort of PR 101. Canadian government

and the mining companies all say the same thing. When you work in these countries, or when you

see the history of Guatemala and Canada's role there and the mining industry's role there,

we know that they know that we know that they know that none of that is true. Like they're

profoundly undemocratic countries. They are characterized by what I said before, military

repression, impunity, corruption, exploitation, racism, et cetera. Again, I'm simplifying,

but not much. And the companies know this. And the Canadian government knows it, but

they don't say that. So they want the trial headed, sent back to Guatemala because they

know that dollars to donuts, it's not going to go anywhere there because part of the corruption

is the corruption of the legal system. One more element of corruption. think that brings

us to part of the pattern that I'm kind of backtracking as to the coup. And, you know, we've seen

this replay so many times, it's almost comical if there wasn't so much at stake. where the

Canadian government refuses to recognize uh elected folks in South America, or the global

South, or all over the place. And once a coup happens and the right people are there, Canada

all of a sudden reestablishes diplomatic relations and enter in co, almost immediately, right,

with the 40-year lease. And I know that that coup was US backed, but it's hard for me. And

I don't know if you actually say that in your reporting. I don't think you do, but it's hard

for me to believe that Canada just happened to walk in afterwards, that there was no role

for them or INCO on the ground ah to establish that coup and to then take over the resources

of Guatemala. Yeah, just like that part of the pattern on top of the violence that then

needs to happen in order to make way on Indigenous land, right? Because they have the coup, they

have the political element, but they don't have the physical land just yet. Right? I don't

know. I'm just like, we just finished doing an episode, Santiago and I talking about the

ceasefire in Palestine and where we just consistently see these patterns that where you can just

watch the media, but but more so capital and the Canadian government and other global governments

just work seamlessly together um to instill the conditions that they need for maximum resource

extraction. Listen, that's an extremely brutal example of many of the same factors that go

into a story like the mining industry writ large and then specifically in this case, the

HUD-based story. These are very predictable systemic stories. the situation with the US

and Canadian backed genocides is just in Palestine. It's just so extreme that I'm sure anyone listening

to this show or most people would be shaking their head in agreement one way or another.

It's just so extreme, but it is the coming together of all of many of the same factors

at play. And that's pretty demoralizing stuff, honestly. It's tough. mean, it does bring you

to, think, like, I mean, we're not there, we're not signing off or anything. But the final

point you kind of make in your report uh or close to the end was, you know, system change.

Like, because you do have a victory. know it has an asterisk next to it that you've

explained, but, you know, you've set a precedent. But the mining hasn't stopped, not even at

that location. Right. And then You've just explained this pattern is repeated a hundred

times over and in all these different places. And I think your quote there was like, look,

like things won't change unless the Guatemalan and Canadian governments essentially function

entirely differently, like a whole different beings altogether. Otherwise they're really

just not band-aids because they don't really, but perhaps. ah It changes the way some of

these companies will need to operate in the future just because there might be financial

implications, image, will it create a political crisis you need here in Canada? I guess like

that's the goal too, right? Like there's not been a lot of noise made here in Canada, even

though we were so proud of our mining industry. And this is such a sensational story. I mean,

the violence that took place, you know, can and would be made into a movie, you know, and

the media just kind of didn't really grab hold of this despite its sensationalism and clear

Canadian ties. um So yeah, any idea on like Santiago, do you want to chime into as well?

Like we almost had that conversation earlier where trying to explain how um a story like

this didn't get more traction. think it's because it is so systemic. And so. um The, as I said

earlier, and as we were saying earlier, I don't think the media before 2010, let's say, properly

reported on mining related harms and violence, corruption, et cetera, around the world properly.

And I don't think they started to do it after 2010. What they start, I shouldn't say 2010,

it was really 2013 when the judge accepted jurisdiction. and created this novel thing in Canada. So

they said, oh, let's pay attention to that. And fair enough, I'm glad they did, but they

should have been doing their jobs right from the get-go. And they gave Hudbay extra attention

all through the 2000s, all through the 2010s and into the 20s. There's similar mining

stuff happening across the planet all the time. And they're not then saying, oh, there's a

bigger story here than we knew. Let's go follow them all. They did give some attention to the

HUDBAE because it was a novel civil lawsuits that changed Canadian law and fair enough.

um And then I think it's just reverted to status quo again now. And there's just no, they're

not gonna really follow up on the story because it has to do with big corporate interests,

big investor interests. You scratch the surface on this stuff and all of our pension funds

are invested in the mining industry. let alone many sectors of the military industry, let

alone the oil and gas. Like it's very systemic stuff. And it was, be a little bit like snarky

about the media, was like fun to have these novel lawsuits. ah But let's get back to,

you know, promoting Canadian interests at home and abroad around the world. And that's really

what our fundamental job is, in sort of concert with the government and our business interests.

And so they're not really, we're hoping that these lawsuits are sort of opening the door

on getting a tiny bit more access to even minimal civil law and criminal law justice. I don't

think the media is using these lawsuits as a crack into doing more wide reporting on

the systemic nature of mining related harms in many countries around the world. In fact,

right now there's... There's these pretty extraordinary lawsuits in Canadian courts against Barrick

Gold. And Barrick Gold is a bit like the elephant in the room in the Canadian mining industry,

particularly the gold industry. But Barrick Gold is a giant. And Peter Monk, the famous

Monk Center, and these are people that donate gazillions of dollars and get their names splashed

all over buildings. And they're great philanthropists. And so Peter Monk and Barrick Gold, that's

kind of mining royalty. If you look at the board of directors of Bear Gold, and I haven't

done it recently, but when Brian Mulrooney left office, you know, the next week he entered

the board of directors of Bear Gold, like the revolving circle between political interests

and political sector and corporate sector. So Bear Gold is like the elephant is a grandfather

of the mining industry. There's lawsuits today in Canadian courts, civil lawsuits. for some

very serious harms and violence and killings in Tanzania. That's a pretty good story. We'll

follow up with them. Yeah. You know, breaking news, Globe and Mail, breaking news, global

news, et cetera. And if they did give some serious attention to Hud Bay, which they did

to a certain extent, it's a logical step to pick an even bigger situation and say, let's

really shine a light on this. It's not happening as far as I know. And I think it's sort of

the closing in of sort of establishment interests and the image we project of ourselves as Canada

around the world and how we want to always promote Canadian political slash economic interests

at all costs in a very unjust, unequal global economic political system. Think Hunger Games.

Are all of these lawsuits happening in civil court? None of it qualifies for criminal court.

A, there's not too many of them, but Hudbay was the first and uh they broke this door open.

There was a second case filed from Guatemala against a company called Tahoe Resources.

Soon after it was filed, these cases were filed in 2010. Once the jurisdictional precedent

was set in 2013, some cases were filed against Hudbay. Tacho resources, another mining struggle

we worked on and some other groups like Breaking the Silence. And those lasted five years

and they got a settlement in that case. But they, I think for reasons related to settlement,

they're not allowed to talk about it. I'm actually not even sure what I just said is true, but

no one's talking publicly and openly about the Tacho lawsuits. So I'm presuming that they

were not allowed to through the settlement agreement, whereas we were allowed to. It was something

we fought for at the settlement process. And we had sort of a six month quiet period.

Was that a compromise between like a just like zero? Yes. And but now we're able to talk

about virtually anything and give these opinions and tell my version of someone else's version

of the whole story and try and dig deeper on all this. After the Tahoe cases, there was

a case from Eritrea against a Canadian company called Nevson Mining. I think that's its name.

And Nevson was partnered with the Eritrean government and they were doing slave labor

at the mining, at some of the mine sites. And now there's the Barrett Gold cases. There's

four cases that I know of. There's not been like this tidal wave of, whoa, now we can

finally get justice. And this is on the civil law side. So I'm hoping they'll get more attention

on the Barrett Gold cases to help keep up. keep trickling all this attention up and out. The

criminal law side is like a black hole. We have a law in the books called Corruption

of Foreign Public Officials Act. It's already criminal law. The law is there. is Canadian

government officials and or company private actors, companies, banks, investors cannot

make payoffs to officials in other countries. And officials includes, as far as I understand,

uh political officials, judicial authorities, military, police, etc. Like anyone who's paid

by the public in X country is a public official of sorts and you can't corrupt them. Makes

sense. I think we have similar laws in Canada. You can't pay them explicitly to make political

moves, but you can reward them financially, right? Because we brag about doing that all

the time, right? It depends on what it is. So you'd have to read the law itself. But I can

give you two examples. How this is going, the use of this law is going nowhere fast. Even

in the Hudbay lawsuits, because of some decisions that Hudbay took, we had to fight some further

legal battles during the 15 years. And through this, some of their internal corporate documents

were revealed into the court record. So Corey Murray, as lawyers, got access to 19,000 confidential

corporate documents that Hudbay had related to all of this mining stuff. We write about

it in the report a bit. But that information is not made public. Corey Murray can use it

to bolster their arguments if they go to court before a judge. They can't make it public.

But if we're forced to go to court on a certain point, to argue a certain, they can make some

of those documents public, put them in the court record, as they say, to explain to a judge,

see, this is why we think we're right and they're wrong. We had to do that at least once in

a significant case. and Marie were able to put it in court records that show that Hudbay was

making uh fundamentally illegal cash payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars to police

and military to co-plan and co-carry out the forced evictions that I was referring to, including

the whole scale destruction of Lotecho, the community where the women were gang raped,

in January of 2007. So that therefore, police and military were working together with the

private security guards. And everyone knows this in Guatemala. Everyone knows this on the

ground in Latin America and the global south. Companies work with military and police and

their local security guards. But they always deny it and you don't get proof. But we got

proof, made it public, so now we can talk about it this way. My understanding is that if there

was uh an office in the attorney general's office, a robust office, when we're looking for corruption

of foreign public official cases around the world and we're on the ball, we provided them

with corporate documents. showing how they made these payments with no receipts, no contracts,

no invoices to police and military via third parties to do the very things that we said

they did that they denied that they did. That's not only strengthened our lawsuits in Canada,

the civil lawsuits to say HUD-Base acting negligently, but you would think that would be, hmm, smells

like or sounds like corruption. It sounds like that might be some company payments. to foreign

public officials, police and military to do these things. Why don't we send a team of

investigators, let's get some prosecutors and go down there and investigate this further

to see if there's actually enough grounds to open, to file criminal charges for corruption.

And what HUD-Bay did probably is small beans compared to what I think many corporations,

banks and investors do. regularly around the world. But for me, and I can't say this legally

because I don't know the law of that one, it's like an open and shut case that this should

be investigated. At least investigated, right? So that's I mean in answering Santiago. There's

no political will to even go after minimal criminal law accountability because the civil

law is minimal civil law accountability that's never been done before. and we helped achieve

it, and I'm grateful, but it's not system change. We don't even have minimal criminal law accountability.

And then of course, we're one of those countries, the great West, we believe in the rule of law,

we believe in democracy, we believe in good governance and accountability and all of this

stuff that we preach to the planet. And there's just all of these cases all the time, just

in the mining sector where we don't. It's just the opposite. I would argue there's plenty

of political will. It's just pushed in the other direction, right? Like they aren't just not

doing anything. You've given countless examples where they go out of their way. The Ambassador

Cook uh story that you tell in their report is a great example of, you know, even someone

kind of taking personal risk to defend or aid in a bet the mining companies in their human

rights abuses, right? They're taking political risks sometimes to bolster this industry

that they've kind of centered our economy around. Yes. Well, that it's the economy and these

are economic interests to Canada to grow the Canadian economy, keep the profits flowing,

keep ah the pension funds providing a good return for investors, keep private equity

funds getting a good return on their investment. It's a very big systemic thing. So there's

a marriage of interests between the mainstream political parties, corporate banking investor

interests, including pension funds, et cetera. And then I think our media plays its role to

sort of promote this and defend it in many ways. It's always a bit simplistic because there's

always exceptions. in the role the media plays and there's good politicians trying to chip

away at it and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But as a generalization, it's a very repetitive

pattern. It's so frustrating to hear you say that it's predictable, you know, and it's

not that you're saying flippantly, but it's just like, oh, what do you mean this was so

predictable? And like, sure enough, you give examples. I'm not denying it by any We wrote

this book, based on four different mining struggles, or we co-edited with a professor friend of

mine, Catherine Nolan. In 2021, it was published and it's called Testimonial, Canadian mining

in the aftermath of genocide in Guatemala. And it deals a bit with the lawsuits, but

they were still ongoing. This deals with... four different mining resistance struggles

in Guatemala that Rights Action has been sort of grassroots funding and involved with since

2004. And everything's a repetitive pattern. And at the same time, Rights Action, just

in our little corner of the planet, Honduras and Guatemala, we're working on two major mining

resistance struggles in Honduras. They could have been included in the book. uh It's just

repetitive patterns, the role of the Canadian government, the role of the embassy. The role

of the local governments and their militaries and police, the roles of the local corporate

elites who are our business partners, and then back in Canada, the role of our media and not

properly reporting, the role of our Canadian government to promote the expansion of Canadian

corporate interests and investor interests in other countries. And if and when the harms

and violations start trickling out into the public sphere through the work of grassroots

activism, independent journalists. Sometimes every now and then mainstream news, deny, deflect,

obfuscate, or outright lie in certain cases. Anything, instead of doing what a government

should do and go, we better look at what our companies are doing there. It's a very repetitive

pattern. And Guatemala and Honduras are just two examples. The Hudbay minerals is just one

typical example, except for there are these unique spectacular lawsuits that move the needle

a bit and change the playing field just a bit. Hudson's Bay being at the, or Hudbay being

at the root of this is, says a lot, I think about our Canadian image and our history,

right? They're, of course, they're not going to go and look at what those companies are

doing because they're following the exact model of colonization that was done here. in Canada

and they are exporting this model outward, actively. yeah, like expecting, not that

you're naive and expecting better of them, of most of them, but it's, that model, yeah,

is not new to South America whatsoever. But I still think folks would be shocked, even

people in the know, to read this report. So I won't just link the report. I'm also going

to link the book. testimonial as well uh for folks to hopefully get a read out of that.

Lots to learn here. We'll probably follow up with Mining Watch as well to get some names,

names to go. To get the breadth of the number of companies, why they're headquartered

in Canada, why Canada calls itself the mining capital of the world. and how many are incorporated

here and then the interplay between the Canadian mining industry and then the Vancouver stock

exchange, the Toronto stock exchange and the New York stock exchange. That's the mining

industry. uh Or that's a very central part of the global mining industry. These three

stock exchanges and a majority of them are a significant percentage being incorporated

in Canada because there's favorable laws to incorporating in Canada. And by a significant

percentage just off the top from from my brief research, it's estimated anywhere between

like 60 % to 75 % of global mining companies are based in Canada. Like we are, the scale

of this is immense. Like, yes. And, and then scratch the surface on whether where there's

mineral interests around the planet, which is, oh, by the way, the entire planet, because

there's minerals everywhere. And then you get the marriage with political interests and which

types of governments were favoring and holding up and which kind of, which types of governments

were trying to malign and criticize and weaken so that we can hopefully help get a government

in power that then opens their, their countries, their policies, their laws to global mining

investment. Enter Canada. It's, it's crazy to me how I feel like most people at this point

are familiar with, for example, the concept of Banana Republics, right? Like that got

a lot of coverage in its time. Whilst this is a topic that like is, to the same scale

yet has, we have barely scratched the surface on. Like I honestly, I have so many questions

and so many things that I, I want to ask and learn about here that like it's It's frightening.

Well, it's pretty daunting. it doesn't get less daunting until it gets exposed and one dives

into it further. I grew up in Canada and spent a large part of my life in the US as well.

I'm a US citizen as well. It's what I was astounded by 30 years ago and 40 years ago, and I'm still

astounded today, is we really don't know how the global economy works. We don't know how

it was created over 500 years ago through centuries of imperialism, colonialism, settler colonialism.

And we don't know how those very centuries of imperialism, colonialism, and settler colonialism.

was the implementation of this global economic system we live in today, and that the global

economic system continues to work in very much the same way, even though out of all of that

mess of imperialism, colonialism, and central colonialism, comes this nation state system,

and we're all born and raised to say, we're 198 autonomous sovereign nations. But it's

almost virtually nonsense, the whole thing, when you see sort of the distribution of political

and economic and military power. And you see the roots of it came through the same processes

that we've already discussed. And so that's a lot of unpacking to do. And uh you can go

into any major store, like appliance store, automobile store, grocery store, clothing store,

shake a stick at anything. And we don't know how it was produced or where in most cases.

at what cost. and mining is just a story in Canada that's starting to get a bit of traction.

But we don't know the cost of bananas, the classic example of the banana republics. We don't know

the cost of oil and gas production. We don't know how it's actually produced and what's

going on and what governments are being thrown, overthrown or put in place. And it doesn't

mean everything that's on the shelf is produced through horrific conditions. it's it's way

more Have you ever worked at Home Depot? I'll leave it there. think we got our points across.

It's very systemic and it's part of the daily fabric of our lives. It is. It's nice to see

victories even if they have, you know, qualifiers because it helps to create a more hostile environment

for these players who have been operating with almost total impunity. Seeing them just try

to flat out deny one point in your report, I think there's a quote there from a CEO, some

suit, you know, going out. I wasn't aware of any any evidence presented that would make

my company look bad, you know, and you're like, well, here's some like, I've got I've got

plenty and, you know, yeah, it might be a small teeny tiny dent, but it's worth kind of. opening

up and sharing all of the stories that all the lessons rather that you learned through this

decades long ordeal. I know it didn't open the floodgates back in 2013. think folks were also

waiting to see how this played out and it still seems kind of daunting, know, can they last

10 years? But there's lots of lessons to be learned from this report and from the experience

of those 13 brave giants. I do appreciate you amplifying that and being a part of it from

the get-go. Listen, it's been a real... Doing this type of local to global human rights

activism, land defense activism, is always hard and daunting. it has been a huge... In that

context, it's been a huge, amazing pleasure and honor to have been involved in these lawsuits.

with these badass lawyers in Canada, the amazing plaintiffs and their families, some incredibly

courageous lawyers in Guatemala, and then just an endless list of sort of individuals and

different organizations in Canada, the US and Guatemala, who helped in a myriad of ways all

along the way. It was worth the whole thing, and that it was this hard just shows how hard

it is. uh now on to sort of the next battle and keep chipping away on every single battle

because it's, you can never prove that any particular justice struggle of this nature

uh won't get somewhere. A lot of them don't, majority of them don't get too far in my life

and that's really hard stuff, but they all trickle up and contribute to moving hopefully

the needle in a certain direction on the planet. Even as we watch the daily news as to what's

going on in a place like Palestine and you just shake your head and go, holy shit, this is

really daunting stuff. Listen, I'm glad that Blueprints for Disruption is out there trying

to do set up some blueprints for disruption. Well, we couldn't do it if there wasn't people

causing shit for us to talk about. um in the courtrooms, on the ground, all over the place.

We very much appreciate the effort it takes and then coming in and telling us about that

effort just adds to your list of things to do. yeah, we appreciate it. Our audience does as

well. um Any parting words? Any words of wisdom for folks that are in their own daunting fights

right now? How does one want to live their life on this planet? Like this is sort of a...

I don't want to keep this too short or sort of simplistic, but this is the global order

we live in. More and more of it's being exposed. It didn't start with these lawsuits. You can

go back 50 and 100 years and see some of the early roots of some serious local to global

activism. And ultimately, in a sense, think through the type of work I've been involved

with, we're just playing catch up with the last 500 years of how the modern global political

military economic order is constructed. We're barely trying to catch up to something that

was put in place through all that we've discussed over the last 500 years, including this abomination

called the transatlantic slave trade. What an extraordinary contribution to this profoundly

unjust global order. and the destruction it left behind. In this type of activism today,

just with this mining industry, we're just trying to catch up to an order that's been put in

place over 500 years. And it's going to take literally generations and generations to

try and slowly shift and transform this stuff. And sooner or later, the transformation has

to come through to the powerful countries and the source of real global political, economic,

military power. In Canada, we live in one of those places. We are part of that order. ah

We have to bring these stories home to ourselves and say these are our stories, ah whether

it's the wars and interventions, whether it's the global economic model, et cetera. And then

we have to say, how do I and we want to live our lives? Do we want to live this way as quote

unquote Canadians? And that type of activism is happening all across the planet all the

time. And it is daunting. But there's no other way than to keep chipping away and spreading

it out. That is a wrap on another episode of Blueprints of Disruption. Thank you for joining

us. Also, a very big thank you to the producer of our show, Santiago Helu-Quintero. Blueprints

of Disruption is an independent production operated cooperatively. You can follow us on Twitter

at BPEofDisruption. If you'd like to help us continue disrupting the status quo. Please

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let us know what or who we should be amplifying. So until next time, keep disrupting.