Indigenous Ecuadorians warn against Canada-Ecuador free trade pact
Speakers at an April 4 webinar co-hosted by Amnesty International, the CCPA and MiningWatch say a free trade agreement would be disastrous for Indigenous rights and the planet.

In December 2023, the Canadian government announced its intention to pursue a free trade agreement (FTA) with Ecuador, which would allow Canadian mining companies heightened access to the Latin American nation’s abundant gold, silver and copper reserves.
But at what cost?
An April 4 webinar co-hosted by Amnesty International Canada, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and MiningWatch Canada featured Ecuadorian Indigenous rights advocates and a Canadian UN special rapporteur warning of the dangers of letting Canadian mining companies run wild in Ecuador, emphasizing free trade’s impact on Indigenous rights and the planet.
A key concern with the potential FTA is the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, which allow companies to subvert local democracy by suing governments that attempt to interfere with their shareholder returns at a secretive international tribunal.
Ecuadorian ambassador to Canada Carlos Játiva told the Hill Times in January that his “marching order” from the Ecuadorian government is to secure a free trade deal with an ISDS clause.
According to the Canadian government’s summary of what it heard during consultations on a potential Ecuadorian FTA, mining companies “stressed the importance of including investor protection in a Canada-Ecuador FTA” for the purposes of “lowering investor risk.”
One of 11 questions in an upcoming April 21 referendum will ask Ecuadorians to endorse international arbitration for investor disputes.
Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, noted at the event’s outset that the Canadian government’s consultations on a potential FTA, which occurred in January and February 2023, excluded any Ecuadorian workers, women or Indigenous Peoples who would be most impacted by increased mining activity.
She noted how Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa, who spoke at a Toronto mining conference on March 4, has been an enthusiastic partner for Canadian mining interests in the region.
According to Canadian government figures, 15 mining companies own $1.8 billion in Ecuadorian assets, constituting 1.8% of Canadian mining assets abroad.
“Oil and mining projects in Ecuador are often approved without the free prior and informed consent of affected communities and Indigenous Peoples, projects that threaten lands, water, food security, health and safety,” said Nivyabandi.
Article 32 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the Canadian federal government has endorsed, requires states “to obtain [Indigenous nations’] free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources [emphasis added].”
This language is echoed in Article 57 of Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution, but an executive decree on environmental consultation Noboa’s predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, issued last year renders Indigenous consent a mere formality.
Although the decree was ruled unconstitutional by Ecuador’s Supreme Court, it remains in place until the National Assembly passes a new law to replace it.
Noboa, who took office in November, issued his own executive decree suspending Ecuadorians’ freedom of mobility, association and assembly under the guise of combatting drug trafficking and gang violence, which has been weaponized to deepen a climate of repression against Indigenous land defenders.
Just two weeks ago, 70 people from the Las Pampas and Palo Quemado communities in Cotopaxi province were arrested on terrorism charges for protesting against Vancouver-based Atico Mining’s proposed La Plata project. Two weeks earlier, according to the Ecumenical Human Rights Commission, the military entered the two towns to intimidate La Plata’s opponents.
“These incidents are certainly not new,” said Nivyabandi. “Impunity is the norm.”
Ivonne Ramos, who specializes in mining issues with the Quito-based environmentalist group Acción Ecológica, said Canadian mining projects “have left deep marks in the territories where they have been installed.”
“The territories where these budding projects are located are precisely in the regions that have the highest level of biodiversity. They're the most beautiful regions of the world,” Ramos said, referring specifically to the Amazon Rainforest, which reaches eastern Ecuador.
Mining has a deleterious impact on water resources — not just in terms of the amount of water it uses, but in the potential for contamination via tailing leaks — which she said is an especially significant concern due to the “peasant economy” that exists on these “extremely fertile” lands mining companies have in their sights.
Ramos noted that Ecuador has already faced 29 ISDS cases since 2002, stemming from bilateral investment agreements the country abrogated in 2017, including the Canada-Ecuador Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA). Twenty-one of these cases have been settled.
In one particularly egregious case, Ecuador was ordered to pay the U.S. company Occidental Petroleum $1.8 billion USD in 2012 for cancelling its permit to explore for oil in the Amazon.
Closer to home, in 2016 Ecuador was ordered to pay Vancouver-based Copper Mesa $19.4 million USD for cancelling three of its mining concessions.
These agreements, combined with “systematic violence in the territories, enables [states] to make a situation attractive for transnational companies,” Ramos added.
She nonetheless expressed confidence in the ability of social movements in the Global North and Global South teaming up “to end these plans of death and extermination.”
“The hope of the Ecuadorian people will not be eradicated,” Ramos said.
Fanny Utitiaj is a founder of the Amazonian Women Defenders of the Forest, a collective founded by women from the seven Indigenous nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Her nation, the Shuar Arutam People of Ecuador, took Vancouver-based mining company Solaris Resources to the British Columbia Securities Commission for withholding information from shareholders about opposition to its Warintza mine from the vast majority of Shuar communities.
“And where's this wealth going? The wealth that has been taken from the territories of indigenous peoples is going to large countries in the north, like Canada. But Ecuador is not covering its health care and education needs.”
“We are the owners of the territories. We are responsible for taking care of and protecting nature. Each peoples and nation has its territories and those must be respected,” Utitiaj told the webinar.
While some Indigenous communities support mining on their territory, she said, there must be a broad consensus for these projects to proceed, “because there's so many impacts in our territory.”
“These extractive projects … have not come through the door with an invitation. No, they've pushed through the windows, and they have ignored the authorities and our will,” said Utitiaj.
In doing so, mining companies “are looting everything in our territory,” she added.
“And where's this wealth going? The wealth that has been taken from the territories of Indigenous Peoples is going to large countries in the north, like Canada. But Ecuador is not covering its health care and education needs.”
Once they’ve gotten what they need to line shareholders’ pockets, Canadian mining companies disappear “like a ghost,” Utitiaj observed.
This exploitation of nature, she added, is particularly burdensome for Indigenous women.
“The territory is a woman's body,” said Utitiaj. “The veins of blood are rivers in our territory, and our body has been polluted.”
Hortencia Zhagüi, who sits on the board of Potable Water Administrators of Victoria del Portete and Tarqui, recounted her decades of experience of peacefully attempting to prevent Toronto-based Dundee Precious Metals’ proposed Loma Larga gold mine beneath the Kimsakocha páramo wetland.
Kimsakocha páramo, Zhagüi explained, is located around 3,500 to 3,800 metres above the main water supply for the area surrounding the nearby city of Cuenca in Ecuador’s southern Azuay province.
“We hadn't seen extraction on our territory before. We had calm, tranquil lives. Our children went to school and we worked like our ancestors did.”
A 2022 independent environmental review of Loma Larga concluded that there’s severe risk of arsenic contamination in the water supply, owing to the 5.5 million tonnes of mine waste that will be left behind from extracting 2.6 million ounces of gold over the mine’s 12-year lifespan.
The mining project was first proposed in the early-aughts and has repeatedly changed ownership since then.
The local community, Zhagüi recalled, was spurred to action when word got out that mining interests were in town to conduct assessments — none of which appeared to involve speaking to the people who live there.
“We hadn't seen extraction on our territory before. We had calm, tranquil lives. Our children went to school and we worked like our ancestors did,”said Zhagüi.
Community members took direct action by blocking the section of Pan-American Highway that passes through Ecuador on route to Peru.
“Our leaders and mothers who were on the front line with our children were all abused and attacked with tear gas and other acts of violence, and we were forced to run,” Zhagüi said, adding that her brother and cousin spent more than a week in jail.
Other members of her family were supportive of the mine. Her brother-in-law, she said, “sold himself to the company.”
“These are very difficult and painful situations,” Zhagüi said, emphasizing that mining companies, as well as the Canadian and Ecuadorian governments, “have zero interest … in our lives.”
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment David R. Boyd told webinar attendees that ISDS clauses are “an absolute disaster from the perspective of climate action, environmental action, and human rights.”
“We're in a planetary environmental emergency — the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity, toxic pollution, water scarcity — and in that context, clearly, governments need to bring in stronger climate and environmental laws to protect nature,” he explained.
The ISDS system serves as a disincentive for governments to take the bold action necessary to address environmental catastrophe, Boyd added, allowing extractive companies to haul governments before an undemocratic international tribunal and sue them for losses.
This creates a “regulatory chill” that makes governments think twice before trying to pursue regulation that might eat into shareholder profits, he added.
Boyd noted that the ISDS mechanism “inverts the polluter pay principle,” forcing nations to pay polluters for the impact of their regulations on the companies’ bottom line, rather than the impact of the company’s activities on the environment.
The updated U.S.-Mexico-Canada FTA removed ISDS provisions that were present in the original North American Free Trade Agreement, which then-international trade minister Chrystia Freeland correctly observed “elevates the rights of corporations over those of sovereign governments,” weakening the state’s ability “to regulate in the public interest, to protect public health and the environment.”
This offers a sharp contrast with what Ecuador is expected to accept.
“It is a complete double standard and hypocrisy,” Boyd said, “if Canada insists that there should be investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms in the proposed Canada-Ecuador Free Trade Agreement when we're not willing to have that in an agreement with the United States.”