#DisruptPDAC Crash the Award Gala
Canadian mining kills, destroys and colonizes.
From the bombs falling on Gaza to the climate fires burning up the planet, from the theft of Indigenous land to the assassination of land defenders, Canadian mining projects are at the heart of the most destructive forces on the planet.
Join us and representatives from communities resisting Canadian mining at the world’s largest mining convention to disrupt the industry’s self-congratulatory awards gala. Mining injustice is nothing to celebrate!
Date: Tuesday March 5th 2024
Time: 5:00 pm
Location: Fairmont Royal York, 100 Front Street
ALL OUT TO #DISRUPTPDAC
Join MISN as we hear from mining impacted community members, greet those attending the mining convention Awards Gala, and #DisruptPDAC! Help us expose the mining industry’s webs of violence and destruction, and disrupt business as usual!
From March 3rd-6th, mining companies will come together in their annual corporate colonial extravaganza—the largest mining convention in the world—PDAC. Taking full advantage of the multiple crises they helped create, corporations and governments continue to expand mining without community consent, destroying the Earth and people’s lives. But we see through their shiny PR and misleading “Corporate Social Responsibility” campaigns.
On March 5th, join us to support mining impacted communities all over the world and #DisruptPDAC’s awards gala.
We’ll gather in front of Fairmont Royal York Hotel (100 Front Street W), where the PDAC 2024 Awards Gala will take place
What is PDAC 2024?
- PDAC (The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada) holds the world’s largest mining conference in Toronto every year, where representatives from mining companies, governments, and other key industry players converge to make deals and ensure they can continue to operate in ways that prioritize profit over the health and well-being of people and our planet.
- It’s no accident that this takes place in Toronto – Over 60% of mining companies worldwide list as Canadian, raising more money on the Toronto Stock Exchange than anywhere else in the world.
- Toronto is the belly of the beast for the mining industry, which means those of us in Toronto have a responsibility to act in solidarity with mining impacted communities around the world.
Why are we crashing PDAC’s awards gala?
We know PDAC’s rhetoric about “community engagement and sustainability” is an attempt at covering up what they are really up to, and the companies winning awards this year are no exception to the violence of extractivism:
- Mining companies are war profiteers, making huge profits providing the raw materials for weapons of war. Every single F-35 fighter jet that the Israeli military is using right now to carry out their genocidal bombing of Gaza contains a huge number of metals including aluminum, chromium and 920 pounds of rare earth elements. The industry that produces these metals and happily sells them to weapons manufacturers has blood on their hands.
- The mining industry is a colonial project. Time and again, mining companies silence, ignore and undermine the wishes of communities. We stand in solidarity with Indigenous communities across Turtle Island and around the world who continue to resist companies and projects that deny communities meaningful control over land, including the vital right to say “no” to mining.
- Mining companies enact violence on communities. Their projects lead to the murder of land defenders, and they take advantage of existing conflicts to push through projects and expropriate land. One of the companies being given an award by PDAC this year is the Lundin Group. This group of companies is controlled by the Lundin family, one of whom is currently facing war crimes charges in Sweden over the actions of a Lundin oil company during the Sudanese civil war.
- The mining industry’s sustainability claims are an attempt to greenwash the many environmental harms that mining causes, from toxic waste to ecosystem destruction. We know that the same companies that brought us to the climate crisis are not going to save us, and that the key to ending the climate crisis is in ending the colonial, white supremacist, and capitalist systems that created it, not further entrenching them.
What companies is PDAC awarding this year?
O3 Mining (a gold company) is being given an award for ESG (environmental, social and governance) performance.
- This is a truly meaningless award when you consider that any gold mining is a hugely destructive process to acquire a metal which has almost no functional purpose but is instead used nearly entirely for decorative and financial reasons. Of the 10% of gold that is used for industrial uses, that demand could easily be met by recycling. Anything short of a moratorium on new industrial gold mines has nothing to do with protecting the environment and communities and is instead a ruse to continue an industry that hugely profits shareholders at the expense of impacted communities and ecosystems.
The Lundin Group’s Vicuňa Exploration Team is being awarded for a copper discovery in Chile and Argentina.
- Given the conduct of other Canadian companies in this region, there is little reason to imagine that this discovery is something to celebrate. Canadian mining companies operating in Argentina have a recent history of violent repression against communities and huge environmental and health impacts. In Chile, communities have had to fight against Canadian companies failing to undertake proper consultations, and an inadequate government environmental assessment process.
- Lundin already has a history in Chile, where the company Minera Candelaria (owned by Lundin Mining) has faced sanctions for environmental non-compliance, as well as being criminally charged with bribery and corruption. Part of the allegations include that the company paid huge bribes in order to prevent municipal governments delaying the environmental approval process.
- Execs from the former Lundin Oil have been indicted for war crimes charges for the company’s activities in South Sudan. Lundin Oil (since renamed several times, currently called Orron Energy) is part of the Lundin Group of companies, and one of the individuals on trial is the son of the founder of this Group. It is alleged that Lundin collaborated with the Sudanese government to develop their oil fields, which involved the military killing over 12,000 people and displacing over 160,000 people in the area in what has been described as a “scorched earth campaign.” There are recorded accounts of attacks on at least 60 villages in Lundin’s oil field area between 1997 and 2002.
- In Guatemala, BlueStone Resources (another part of the Lundin Group) continues to operate the Cerro Blanco project in the face of huge community opposition and environmental concerns, and is changing the mine to an even-more-destructive open pit model.
Victoria Gold is being awarded for the financing of their Eagle Gold Mine in the Yukon.
- PDAC apparently feels the company should still be celebrated, despite a 2023 lawsuit by 2 former employees alleging that they were sexually harassed on the job and that the company was a “toxic workplace” for women. The company was also fined by the Yukon government in 2023 for violating its water license conditions, including spilling 17,000 litres of cyanide solution in 2021.
The fact that these companies are considered examples of “excellence” is an undeniable sign that the mining industry in its entirety is incompatible with the kind of world we are fighting for.