Episode 3.5: How can we confront the environmental challenges associated with Canadian mining?

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Mining is an essential component to our everyday lives, providing us with the raw materials we need to create a wide variety of products. However, while mining contributes to our technological progress, it comes with an often hidden dark side rife with environmental and human rights abuses. When more than 60% of the world's mining companies are based in Canada, what does this mean for us as everyday ecocitizens? What responsibilities do we have with respect to holding these companies to account for their use and abuse of people and planet? These are some of the questions we drill into today with guests Chandu Claver, International Spokesperson for the Cordillera Peoples' Alliance, Teresa Kramarz, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, and Sheri Meyerhoffer, Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE).

Host

Peter Andrée
Professor, Department of Political Science, Carleton University

Host

Ryan M. Katz-Rosene
Assistant Professor, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa

Guest

Chandu Claver
International Spokesperson, Cordillera Peoples' Alliance, Philippines

Guest Bios

Guest

Teresa Kramarz
Associate Professor, University of Toronto

Guest Bios

Guest

Sheri Meyerhoffer
Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise

Guest Bios

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Guest Bio

Chandu Claver

Chandu Claver was a physician-surgeon serving the countryside of the Northern Cordillera Region in the Philippines for 22 years up to 2006. He is an Igorot native from one of the indigenous mountain tribes. He was a community health organizer, as well as an indigenous rights and human rights activist working with the Cordillera Peoples Alliance.

In the northern Philippine province of Kalinga, he was active in the setting up self-reliant community health programs in the remote villages. He advocated against destructive development projects, particularly mining. He was involved in the provincial peasant movement, and actively led the local Political Party in electoral struggle under the Bayan Muna or “Nation First” banner.

After being continually harassed, vilified as an active supporter of the armed struggle against the State, and threatened through text messages, his family was ambushed in broad daylight in the urban center of the Provincial Capital in July 2006. The State-perpetuated ambush took the life of his wife and severely wounded him and one of his daughters.

Continuing threats against his life and his children forced them to move to Canada as political refugees in March 2007. Presently, he now works for migrant welfare and rights as a staff of DamayanBC – a newly-established migrant resource center in Vancouver. Also, he is presently one of the international spokespersons of the Cordillera Peoples’ Alliance.

Teresa Kramarz

Teresa Kramarz is Associate Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in the University of Toronto. She directs the Munk One undergraduate program, co-directs the Environmental Governance Lab (with Steven Bernstein and Matthew Hoffmann, University of Toronto) and is the co-convener of the Accountability in Global Environmental Governance Task Force of the Earth System Governance network (with Susan Park, University of Sydney). Her work focuses on environmental accountability, the governance of extractive industries and performance of multistakeholder partnerships led by international organizations. Dr. Kramarz is the author of three books - “Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap” and “Forgotten Values: The World Bank and Environmental Partnerships” both published by MIT Press and most recently “Populist Moments and Extractivist States in Venezuela and Ecuador: The People's Oil?” Recent articles appear in Environmental Politics, Global Environmental Politics, Energy Research and Social Science, Society and Natural Resources, Environmental Policy and Governance, and Review of Policy Research. She has been working on environmental policy and governance issues for over 25 years starting as an international civil servant in the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme and later as a scholar.

Sheri Meyerhoffer

Sheri Meyerhoffer was appointed as Canada’s first Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise in April 2019. She then established the office of the Ombudsperson at the beginning of May 2019.

Sheri is a Canadian lawyer with seventeen years experience in the upstream oil and gas industry, and thirteen years experience in international governance, rule of law and human rights. 

She has worked in Bhutan, Bolivia, Cuba, China, India, Jamaica, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia and the USA, has a Juris Doctor from the University of Saskatchewan, and is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School with a Master in Public Administration and Certificate in Management, Leadership and Decision Sciences.

Ms. Meyerhoffer has the mandate to review alleged human rights abuses arising from a Canadian garment, mining or oil and gas company’s operations abroad, make recommendations, monitor those recommendations, recommend trade measures for companies that do not co-operate in good faith, and report publicly throughout the process.