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Delivering Community Power CUPW 2022-2023

Top Canadian mining companies raked in revenues of $143 billion in 2021

Between 1990 and 2015, the Global North appropriated land, resources, and labour worth $242 trillion from the Global South

Canadian PoliticsCanadian Business

Barrick Gold’s Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic. Photo courtesy Barrick Gold.

In August 2022, the Canadian Mining Journal—a reliably pro-corporate industry magazine—published its list of Canada’s top 40 mining companies based on 2021 revenues. To merit inclusion on the list, companies needed to meet two of the following three criteria: 1) be domiciled in Canada, 2) trade on a Canadian stock exchange, and 3) have a significant share of an operating mine or advanced development in Canada. The vast majority of the top 40 companies are headquartered in Canada: 36 out of 40.

In total, Canada’s top 40 mining companies raked in revenues of $143 billion in 2021, up from $124 billion in 2020. This means, according to World Bank data, that the 2021 earnings of Canada’s largest mining companies exceed the total GDP of every country in Africa except four (Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa). In other words, the total value extracted by the 40 largest Canadian mining companies in one year is more valuable than the complete GDP of 50 of Africa’s 54 UN-recognized countries.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mining was designated an essential service, and the industry continued to extract substantial amounts of minerals while other sectors of the economy stalled. However, many of the Canadian companies in the top forty operate primarily overseas, in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In fact, 19 of the top 40 companies did not operate a single mine in Canada in 2021, while ten operated only one mine in the country in which they are registered. Three of the top ten profit-makers—First Quantum Minerals (fifth place), Kinross Gold (eighth place), Lundin Mining (ninth place)—did not operate any mines in Canada in 2021.

First Quantum raised $9 billion in revenue last year—more than the GDP of Mauritania, where it owns 100 percent of the profitable Guelb Moghrein mine. Kinross Gold made $4.6 billion from investments in the United States, Brazil, Chile, and Mauritania. And Lundin Mining brought in $4.1 billion from its predominantly Latin American operations.

At the same time, the Canadian mining sector is attempting to rebrand itself as a sustainable and ecologically conscious industry leading the national call for reconciliation. One aspect of this is the industry’s constant references to ESG—environment, social, and governance concerns—which according to Carolyn Burns is “part of the ongoing discussion about the role of a company in supporting a healthy society, environment and economy.”

In the latest issue of Canadian Mining Journal, Mike Commito and Steve Gravel wrote that “Mining needs a rebrand… For many, mining represents pollution and degradation of the environment.” They may have also added imperialism and economic underdevelopment. “If you were to ask someone what they first think of when they hear the word mining, they might say belching smokestacks from smelter facilities or tailings ponds where mine waste is stored.” They may have also added the Canadian mining code advisors who are a staple presence in many Latin American and African mining ministries.

Commito and Gravel write that, with a sustained advertising campaign aimed at reshaping public perception of mining, the industry’s image can be dramatically improved. They note a recent ad campaign by Dairy Farmers of Ontario as a model:

In recent years, the Dairy Farmers of Ontario have had a series of successful advertising campaigns that have focused on reorienting the public’s perception of dairy products by zeroing in on notions of social and environmental responsibility… The key was to highlight the experience of local family-owned farms and deemphasize any notions of potentially cruel factory farming to change public perception of the dairy industry…


They conclude that “an ad campaign with evocative storytelling and meaningful slogans like this… can effectively reset [negative] perceptions of the mining sector.”

Canadian mining companies extract tens of billions of dollars from Latin America, Africa, and Asia while poverty rates in these regions remain crushingly high. An industry ad campaign aimed at the Canadian public changes nothing about the realities of Canadian mining practices domestically and especially in the Global South—practices which enabled $143 billion of revenue in 2021.

This Canadian expropriation of value is part of the massive, centuries-long extraction of resource and labour wealth from the Global South by the North, a process of legalized plunder that maintains global inequality to this day. Alejandro Pedregal and Juan Bordera write that, between 1990 and 2015, the Global North “appropriated embodied raw material, hectares of land, energy, and labor worth $242 trillion, equal to a quarter of its gross domestic product.” Meanwhile in the South, “2.2 billion people cannot access safe drinking water, 4.2 billion lack safe sanitation, 2 billion live in water-scarce countries, 759 million have no access to electricity… and 2.6 billion continue to lack clean ways to cook.”

Almost all the mining companies in the top forty operate mines in the Global South, and in most of these cases, these mines have been focal points in local struggles against social, economic, and political alienation and underdevelopment. And, in nearly all cases, the Canadian state has either overtly supported the companies or ignored their actions abroad.

In short, the Canadian mining industry does not need a rebrand—it needs a reality check. It needs regulation. It needs to be held accountable for its abuses and for the substantial role it has played in the appropriation of value from the Global South, which will certainly not happen under the Canadian government as it presently exists.

Owen Schalk is a writer based in Winnipeg. He is primarily interested in applying theories of imperialism, neocolonialism, and underdevelopment to global capitalism and Canada’s role therein. Visit his website at www.owenschalk.com.

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