Under pressure from U.S. tariffs and surging demand for critical minerals, Canadian mining companies are seizing global expansion opportunities—but experts warn their operations are driving human rights abuses and environmental destruction that must be addressed.

In Argentina, the lithium mining operations of Lition Energy, under Canadian company Pan American Energy, were approved through irregular environmental licences and permits, said Verónica Chávez from the Tres Pozos Sanctuary community.

As industry groups gathered at a mining trade show and convention in Toronto last week, Chávez spoke at a parallel event, a tribunal for the rights of nature, created by the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN). Chávez told the tribunal the mining industry is devastating water, land, and the livelihoods of 400 Indigenous communities.

Inspired by other international tribunals, and structured like a courtroom trial, the event featured witnesses from Canada and beyond who described the industry’s impacts on their communities, while experts and activists acted as judges.

Hidden ‘True Costs’ of Critical Minerals

As demand for lithium and uranium rises with electrification, their extraction is reshaping rural Indigenous communities, disrupting landscapes and straining water resources. At Cigar Lake and McArthur River in Saskatchewan, Cameco’s uranium mining operations provide local jobs but have also entrenched colonial-style extraction, said Jordyn Burnouf, sustainable energy and sovereignty specialist for the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan, leading to the loss of caribou, medicinal plants, sustenance hunting, and clean water.

“What we’re missing and what’s important to consider are the true costs,” said Burnouf, a member of Black Lake First Nation from Sakitawahk or Île-à-la-Crosse.

Indigenous and local representatives from across South America described deforestation, water pollution, endangered species decimation, and human rights violations including sexual harassment, assault, and imprisonment. In Argentina, Toronto-based Barrick Gold has yet to face trial for a 2015 cyanide spill, the worst in the country’s history. In Brazil, the Belo-Sun mining corporation, also headquartered in Toronto, is pushing to open a gold mine near the Xingu River, displacing Indigenous communities and facing resistance that has led to one death and 50 detentions, said writer and local activist Ana Laide Soares Barbosa.

In Serbia, Canadian-owned Dundee Precious Metals risks contaminating local watersheds with arsenic and other toxins, said local property owner Rade Mosic, who claims contamination may have already occurred during exploration, citing results from a water test that Dundee conducted at his insistence.

Dundee, Silvercorp Metals, and Salazar Resources are also exploring and operating in Ecuador, where their projects similarly threaten water, land, forests, and local communities.

“As our country plans to expand mining of critical minerals, it’s absolutely essential that we go into this with eyes wide open—that we understand the practices of these companies,” Canadian activist Tzeporah Berman, a judge at the unofficial tribunal, told The Energy Mix.

As Canada deals with tariff threats from the Donald Trump administration, “there is going to be a lot of pressure to rely on our resources, again, to save us,” said another judge, author and veteran activist Maude Barlow. But neither tariffs nor surging demand can justify violating nature and people, Berman and Barlow said.

Transition to Wider Justice

The tribunal is calling for [pdf] a binding United Nations treaty on business and human rights, and recognition of the rights of nature in countries affected by extractive mining. The tribunal is urging governments to stop mining ecologically sensitive areas, and to ensure consultation with affected communities.

Activists at the forum also suggested Canadian societies and economies change practices to ensure wider social and environmental justice.

“Our call to action for governments and for industry and for the general public is that we actually need to change the way that we are in relationship with the Earth, we need to change the way we live, we need to change our consumption patterns,” activist educator Heather Milton-Lightening, who served as president of the judges’ panel, told The Mix. “It’s thinking about the ways we can transition to a different economy, a different way of living, that doesn’t leave people behind.”

The tribunal’s 34 recommendations will be presented at the United Nations climate summit in November. They urge transparency around nuclear waste management and better processes for informed consent from uranium mining communities. Provincial and federal governments and the nuclear energy industry must ensure that community consent is real, informed consent—that it’s “not built by the industry and given to the community,” Burnouf said.

“Part of the challenge is understanding the real reason we signed treaties and were forced onto reserves was economic coercion—our people were starving, buffalo were annihilated, we really didn’t have a choice; we had to make some hard choices to survive,” said Milton-Lightening.

“Even now, we’re fed this idea that resource extraction is going to alleviate poverty and often communities don’t feel like they have a choice.”

The activists call for the rejection of Canada’s recently-negotiated free trade agreement with Ecuador, where nature has constitutionally protected rights. The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism in the agreement allows corporations to sue governments if they are denied money and permits or face regulatory actions that affect their profits, they warned. The ISDS was included at Canada’s urging, even though it was rejected by citizens of Ecuador in a referendum last year.

Berman hopes the unofficial tribunal can influence legal battles and wider policy discussions. The event’s mandate aligns with emerging legal frameworks like the push to criminalize ecocide and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. By documenting and exposing nature violations, the tribunal is building a body of evidence that can support cases in the court system.

Holding the nature rights tribunal in Canada was important to spotlight the country’s unjust practices, Milton-Lightening said. “Canada presents itself as a protector and a leader in the global community around human rights,” so mining companies must be held to that standard, she explained. “I hope it will help educate and open some thoughts and eyes and minds around how this system functions and what Canada’s role is in it.”