PDAC and everything it stands for is fundamentally incompatible with the world we need to build for climate justice and a livable future.
Join us for a kid-friendly event! Bring your family, friends, colleagues, kids, neighbours, and loved ones to help us #DisruptPDAC with a creative and artistic intervention!
We’ll gather across from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre where PDAC 2022 will take place. The world’s biggest mining convention is coming to Toronto and the industry is greenwashing its colonial and capitalist destruction like never before. From June 13 - 15, mining companies will paint themselves as the solution to the climate crisis, when they are actually a cause. Taking full advantage of the crisis they helped create, corporations and governments continue to expand mining without community consent, destroying the environment and people’s lives. But we see through their shiny PR and misleading “Corporate Social Responsibility” campaigns.
Help us expose these greenwashing lies and disrupt business as usual! Join us to support mining impacted communities all over the world and #DisruptPDAC.
What is PDAC 2022?
Every year at PDAC, representatives from mining companies, governments, and other key industry players converge to make deals and ensure they can continue to operate in ways that prioritize profit over the health and well-being of people and our planet. This year is no exception.
It’s no accident that the PDAC convention takes place in Toronto every year. Over 60% of mining companies worldwide list as Canadian, raising more money on the Toronto Stock Exchange than anywhere else in the world. This same industry is also one of the most egregious offenders when it comes to human rights and environmental abuses. Toronto is the belly of the beast for the mining industry which means those of us in Toronto have a responsibility to act in solidarity with mining impacted communities around the world.
What is ‘greenwashing’ and why are they using this strategy?
Greenwashing is when an organization spends more time and money on marketing itself as environmentally friendly than on actually minimizing its environmental impact. It’s a deceitful marketing gimmick intended to mislead consumers who prefer to buy goods and services from environmentally conscious brands. Mining companies are now very focused on marketing themselves as green to investors but continue to push projects forward that have not been consented to and that will have devastating environmental impacts.
From Doug Ford’s plan to massively expand mining in northern Ontario’s so-called “Ring of Fire,” to mining giants Ross Beaty and Andrew Forrest insisting they are leaders on climate change while pushing forward contentious projects in environmentally sensitive areas to RBC claiming to be ‘reimagining a sustainable future’ while investing in Coastal Gas Link, the Volta Grande project, and more projects synonymous with environmental damage and violations of free prior and informed consent, it is clear that many involved in PDAC are attempting to cash in on a green image without actually doing the real work involved in building a future that leaves no one behind.
It’s no secret that technology like solar panels and wind turbines rely on immense amounts of metals and minerals. But make no mistake: the companies who are jumping on the climate crisis bandwagon are the same ones that brought us to this point. Their messages may have shifted, but their quest for profit is business as usual. Meanwhile, communities across the globe are fighting back to protect their water, their lands, and their livelihoods from the impacts of mining – refusing to become sacrifice zones while investors get rich. We know we can do better and we know that the key to ending the climate crisis is in ending the colonial, white supremacist, and capitalist systems that created it, not further entrenching them.