Mining Accountability

Matthew Supple

SOC 202

Canadian mining companies have enjoyed a legal loophole that all other industries don’t; having to reveal the tracking their pollution they cause to the fullest extent. It was released on Thursday that the Federal Court ruled to enforce the long standing law. Environment Canada will be collecting and divulging information about the amount of toxic compounds in the mining’s waste from every mine in the country. This comes after more than sixteen years of fighting for this exact bill. The current thought is that the information released will reveal that the industry is the most toxic, releasing arsenic and mercury and sulfur. The data will be available to the public and thus force them to be accountable for what they put out into their environment. As it is now the waste of the mines are left lying around the mine sites.



It’s an important move to enforce accountability of leading industries to the public. It’s essential groundwork to ensure sustainability being an actual possibility in the near future. This marks another huge gain for the environmental world because as environmentally devastating companies go, mining is one of the worst, if not the worst. The only real problem with this is that it took almost two decades


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090425.MINING25ISLART2118/TPStory/Environment