[BCFSN] Fwd: [BCMAN] Amnesty Releases Report on Human Rights Impact of Mt Polley Tailings Breach

[Dawn Morrison]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Jamie Kneen" <jamie at miningwatch.ca>
Date: May 29, 2017 7:07 PM
Subject: [BCMAN] Amnesty Releases Report on Human Rights Impact of Mt
Polley Tailings Breach
To: "MiningWatch News" <mining-news at googlegroups.com>, "BCMAN list" <
bcman at googlegroups.com>, "Militarized Commerce list" <
militarized_commerce at list.web.net>
Cc:

http://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/48928/amnesty-releases-
report-human-rights-impact-mt-polley-tailings-breach/

AMNESTY RELEASES REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS IMPACT OF MT POLLEY TAILINGS BREACH
KYLE BALZER <http://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/talent/kylebalzer/>,
STAFF SATURDAY,
MAY. 27TH, 2017
<http://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/48928/amnesty-releases-report-human-rights-impact-mt-polley-tailings-breach/>
<http://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/canadas-mount-polley-disaster-sparks-concern-over-us-mines.jpg>

Amnesty International says the August 2014 Mount Polley tailings pond
breach raises serious questions about the province’s ability to protect
British Columbians' economic, social, cultural, Indigenous, and universal
human rights under current mining regulations.

The organization released a report
<http://www.amnesty.ca/sites/amnesty/files/FINAL_May%2024_Mount%20Polley%20briefing.pdf>
 entitled ‘*A Breach of Human Rights-The Human Rights Impact of the Mount
Polley Mines Disaster*.’

“We had meetings and interviews and phone calls to get an overview and what
we have been looking are violations of economic, social, and cultural
rights that Canada has the obligation to protect. For example, the right to
a healthy environment, the right to water, the right to cultural rights
such as the rights enjoyed by Indigenous peoples in Canada,” says business
and human rights campaigner Tara Scurr, who adds people have the right to a
remedy when those rights are violated.

“People haven’t received any kind of compensation. One of the remedies
might be that they would like to the company fined. The company has not
been fined so people are feeling that they’re not having the remedies that
they’re asking for which they have a right to ask for.”

Scurr explains they also found in their investigation, in which they
travelled to Likely and Williams Lake in *2015*, *2016*, and *2017*,
weaknesses in BC’s mining laws for human rights protection when they’re
seeing business activity in the resource sector in the province.

Scurr says there are concerns on how the recommendations from an expert
panel have been implemented.

“The expert panel recommended that BC not use tailings storage facilities
any longer and they look at doing dry storage because it minimizes risk. So
in the new legislation and the code of all that that has come forward it’s
not strong enough language that we feel would really protect human rights
as British Columbia is meant to do. That’s in part why we’re calling for
and backing the call for a public inquiry into BC’s mining regulation
framework. We think a public inquiry would help to really identify where
those human rights gaps are and identify ways that the province could bring
their policies, regulations, and laws in all of those different areas that
touch on resource development in line with Canada’s human rights
obligations.”

Without knowing the full range of impacts on human rights
<http://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/16566/first-nations-report-calls-for-super-fund-after-mount-polley-mess/>,
Scurr adds it’s unusual to allow a company to discharge wastewater into a
lake that doesn’t even meet BC drinking water guidelines.

“Residents and First Nations, and communities have said they’re really
concerned that there could be unknown long-term ongoing human rights harm
from really essentially using Quesnel Lake as part of the water treatment
process to dilute the effluent further so that it does meet drinking water
guidelines.”

<http://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/amnesty-logo-wihte.png>

Amnesty says in order for the public to truly assess the human rights
impacts of the Mount Polley disaster
<http://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/18836/one-year-anniversary-of-mount-polley-breach/>,
the province should release the findings of a number of impact studies it
ordered, as well as the findings of the Conservation Officer Services
investigation.

“There some things the province could do right away,” says Scurr.

“For example around access to information. Anyone who has looked for
information about the water treatment and water testing will know that
there are many websites where information is posted, often the documents
are difficult to access. One thing in the more short term is to ensure that
the testing results are made publicly accessible in easy to read, easy to
download format on one website.”

A United Nations Working Group will be in Williams Lake to discuss and
investigate the 2014 spill with First Nations, local government, and
community groups on Sunday.

“They’ll be listening to presentations from a variety of people in the
community, then they’ll be coming out with a report on June 1st with the
recommendations to Canada. So we’ll see if they’ll be recommendations on
the Mt. Polley disaster and ongoing issues on that. Then that report will
go to the Human Rights Council,” Scurr explains.

A Ministry of Energy and Mines spokesperson says they can’t comment because
of temporary suspension from usual functions of government due to the
election.

Imperial Metals also did not offer comment at this time.

The company, which held their annual conference in Coquitlam on Thursday,
was met with the protest of Indigenous activists and supporters.

One person was arrested while another four were forcibly removed by police.

*– with files from Rebecca Dyok, My Cariboo Now*
-- 
Jamie Kneen, Communications & Outreach Coordinator, MiningWatch Canada
[image: MiningWatch] <http://www.miningwatch.ca/>[image: MiningWatch]
<https://www.facebook.com/MiningWatch>[image: @MiningWatch]
<https://twitter.com/MiningWatch>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"BC Mining Action Network" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to BCMAN+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to BCMAN at googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/BCMAN.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://bcfsn.org/pipermail/food_bcfsn.org/attachments/20170529/f4cc269f/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: FBimage.png
Type: image/png
Size: 447 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://bcfsn.org/pipermail/food_bcfsn.org/attachments/20170529/f4cc269f/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: canadas-mount-polley-disaster-sparks-concern-over-us-mines.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 93618 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://bcfsn.org/pipermail/food_bcfsn.org/attachments/20170529/f4cc269f/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: WWWimage.png
Type: image/png
Size: 3326 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://bcfsn.org/pipermail/food_bcfsn.org/attachments/20170529/f4cc269f/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: amnesty-logo-wihte-300x105.png
Type: image/png
Size: 10537 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://bcfsn.org/pipermail/food_bcfsn.org/attachments/20170529/f4cc269f/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Twitterimage.png
Type: image/png
Size: 552 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://bcfsn.org/pipermail/food_bcfsn.org/attachments/20170529/f4cc269f/attachment-0003.png>