New mineral frontlines
Two workers at a Canadian mining project in Pakistan’s western province of Balochistan are abducted by counterterrorism forces. A suicide bomber blows up a paramilitary outpost guarding a mining development site. Attacks on foreign mining companies and port infrastructure escalate.
“People are scared to talk,” says Lateef Johar, human rights defender and member of the Human Rights Council of Balochistan. In 2023, he submitted a complaint on Barrick Mining to the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE).
The Canadian company is in the early stage of developing a copper-gold mine called Reko Diq in Balochistan’s Chagai district, near China’s gold-producing Saindak mine.
Opponents allege insufficient consent, violation of Baloch self-determination, risk of water pollution, and repressive conditions for civil society. Diverse insurgencies, jihadist groups, and Baloch nationalist movements have long rejected Pakistan’s central government and the colonial border with Afghanistan known as the Durand Line. Resource companies rely on counter-terrorism units and the paramilitary Frontier Corps to secure the Chagai region. Baloch human rights activists are routinely targeted, with the Frontier Corps accused of the majority of abductions and killings.
Yet, Barrick has denied allegations of contributing to social harms.
“There’s no transparency, there’s no respect. Companies are becoming kind of lawless,” Johar said. For over a year, the CORE office has been vacant, and communities left in the dark.
Created by the Liberals in 2019, the CORE is one of two dispute resolution mechanisms for alleged human rights violations by Canadian companies operating abroad. The other is the National Contact Point (NCP), which lacks independence under the Ministry of Trade, and does not conduct investigations, publish reports on violations, or make recommendations for remedy.
With marginally greater investigatory powers, the CORE itself cannot compel witnesses and evidence, or provide meaningful remedies for those harmed. Its mandate is limited to garment, mining, and oil and gas companies. And as an advisory body, the office can only give recommendations to Canadian authorities, not legally-binding requirements.
For all its flaws, the CORE still offered proof of concept for oversight of Canadian corporate actors abroad after over a decade of domestic pressure—until the office ground to a halt.
In May 2024, the first Ombudsperson Sheri Meyerhoffer stepped down. The role was filled for a year by interim Ombudsperson Masud Husain. Since May 2025, the position again sits vacant. “Instead of fighting our own cases and fighting for others, we are instead focusing on saving this mechanism,” Johar says. There are legal complications, he was told, but it’s unclear what they are. Answers expected last summer are still delayed.
Increased militant violence in Chagai has led global conflict monitor Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) to mark last year as the most violent in Balochistan in six years. Mining companies are directly in the crosshairs. China’s Saindak mine, port infrastructure in Gwadar, and trucks carrying mining materials have all been attacked with strategic consistency. Attacks on Pakistan’s security forces show “growing operational sophistication,” with December’s attack of a Frontier Corps camp seen as escalation.
“These are not small actions,” Johar says, describing the impact of resource projects in Balochistan driven by Pakistan’s central government. “People on the ground consider them direct attacks on their livelihoods, on their dignity, on their sovereignty.”
Risky business
In northeastern Namibia, environmental activists have sought to halt oil and gas exploration upstream from the Okavango Delta by Calgary-based ReconAfrica. Drilling sites threaten a precious ecosystem and the livelihoods of rural communities in the Kavangos.
Since 2021, activists have called for a moratorium and public inquiry into fossil fuel exploration in the region, launched a case against the environmental clearance granted by the Namibian government, and pressured the Toronto Stock Exchange to block the company’s listing. A whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that investors were being misled.
ReconAfrica has denied the negative impacts in the Kavangos, dismissing the investigation as a disguised short selling strategy.
“Companies like ReconAfrica can continue to go to Africa and do what they want, and face no consequences,” said Rob Parker, Canadian activist with Saving Okavango’s Unique Life (SOUL) working in coalition with Namibian activists. “The [Environment] minister sat on our case for three years and then ruled without even informing the appellants.”
In April 2024, SOUL and the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program (IHRP) filed a complaint with the CORE, citing cases of a lack of consent for clearing land, damage to livelihoods, and suspected water contamination. Seismic surveying was reported across numerous community forests. Some even feared police surveillance of “community members who oppose ReconAfrica’s activities.”
IHRP director Sandra Wisner led the investigation in Namibia in 2023. A response was expected within a month after the CORE received the evidence, she said. But it’s been stuck “under review for admissibility” ever since Meyerhoffer’s mandate ended. The coalition wrote to the Minister of International Trade in October, expressing concern that “the Canadian government would ask affected communities to place their safety and well-being at risk” amid the delays.
The coalition did not go to Canada’s NCP because of the agency’s lack of investigatory powers and emphasis on mediation over investigation, Parker said. “They have openly violated the law,” Parker said. “We don’t think sitting down with the company changes any of that.”
A promising test case
A legacy of preventable tragedies that have killed and injured thousands of workers in Bangladesh—the Dhaka factory fire and the Rana Plaza collapse among the most catastrophic—prompted Bangladesh to introduced the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in 2013. This law was supposed to see building codes and structural standards improve across the world’s second largest textile exporter after China.
Over a decade later, regulatory enforcement still lags. Another garment factory fire claimed the lives of sixteen workers in October 2025 because of a locked door. A 5.7 magnitude earthquake near Dhaka in November injured hundreds and caused widespread damage to buildings. Working a factory shift can still be a gamble with life and death.
Year after year, Bangladesh ranks among the world’s ten worst countries for workers’ rights. Amnesty reports routine “threats of retaliation” for unionizing, and women (the majority garment workforce) experiencing a “culture of impunity for male perpetrators” of bullying, violence and discrimination.
In 2022, the Canadian Labour Congress and United Steelworkers union (USW) filed a complaint with the CORE. Workers in the Mark’s supply chain (L’Équipeur in Québec, and a Canadian Tire subsidiary) are paid less than living wages, they argued. These wages fall far below industry benchmarks and effectively trap workers in dangerous and discriminatory conditions.
This was supposed to be a “test case,” said Guillaume Charbonneau, USW global affairs department leader. But Canadian Tire asked the CORE not to proceed by calling the complaint “unfounded,” and “refused to provide” information about factories, wages and contracts in their supply chain. The concept of a living wage remains “aspirational” and beyond the CORE’s scope, Canadian Tire argued.
When Meyerhoffer left the CORE, the Canadian unions were “told informally that investigation would probably not be going ahead” and was finally closed in October 2024. The unions called for a judicial review of the CORE’s decision, but the Federal Court rejected it this past November for not qualifying for judicial review.
The lack of legal powers and inability to compel evidence are crucial reforms activists have called for the CORE and human rights oversight in Canada. “Ongoing failure to act in this regard will continue to exhibit the limited intentions of the government,” the USW stated.
Chilled debate
Corporate accountability non-profit Above Ground reports 35 complaints submitted to the CORE about human rights violations by Canadian corporations abroad as of March 2024. Of these, half were admissible. By spring last year, six files were under investigation and only one was completed.
Not all complaints are made public.
The CORE anonymously confirmed to rabble.ca by email that the office is still open with 24 active cases. The website’s complaint form has been unavailable for months “due to a technical issue.” Complaints are fielded by email and phone, which goes to an automatic voicemail. The CORE did not reveal how many analysts work at the government office or why no progress was made on files under former Deputy Minister Masud Husain.
Some complainants have been “asked to sign NDAs,” said Jocelyne Dubois, international director of the Canadian Labour Congress. “There’s a bit of a chill about talking about it.” rabble.ca was told that advocates were asked “to refrain” from speaking with the media as there could be impacts when it “comes time to bring the parties together for productive dialogue.” Findings are made public, the CORE said, only after the initial assessment is completed. The government office did not comment on the requests for complainants to not speak with media.
Calls for reform of the Ombudsperson’s office have persisted for over five years. Meyerhoffer herself has testified that companies refuse to engage with the CORE, calling for powers “to compel documents and testimony.”
The Liberal budget did not reflect funding for the CORE, and no senior appointments were made for the office in December.
