Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s former company, Brookfield Asset Management, has been accused of violating Indigenous rights, causing environmental damage and was alleged to have violated modern slave labour prohibitions in several countries while he was co-chair.
The firm, which positions itself as a leader in green investing and renewable energy faced a $100 million lawsuit in Ontario, reports of human rights abuses in Brazil, Indigenous pushback in Colombia and an environmental dispute in Maine, U.S.
First reported by independent journalist Mario Zelaya, Brookfield-operated hydroelectric dams and wind turbines damaged land and threatened Indigenous rights in Ontario, Maine and Colombia.
Additionally, the company was accused of human rights violations and mass deforestation in Brazil by NGO Global Witness in 2021, all while Carney was at the helm.
Brookfield allegedly attempted to evict local Indigenous inhabitants and faced a breach of Brazil’s anti-slavery law during one of its “slash and sell” campaigns.
“Green finance champion Mark Carney cleared thousands of football fields worth of tropical forest in Brazil,” wrote Global Witness in 2022. “The legality of which could not be proven by Brookfield Asset Management, took place on eight farms owned and managed by Brookfield’s soybean farming empire.”
“The empire also owned a farm whose managers sought to evict Indigenous Peoples from land they claim their own,” it continued. “Brookfield’s involvement in deforestation and human rights abuses contrast with its own environmental, social and governance (ESG) policy and Mr Carney’s public image.”
A firm under Brookfield’s control was fined $190,199 in December 2021 for alleged use of slave labour offences at a different farm.
Although Carney advocated for more economic benefits and reconciliation for Indigenous Canadians in his 2021 book Value(s), Brookfield Renewable’s firm, Evolugen, has faced sharp criticism from the same Indigenous communities Carney claims to support.
Brookfield Renewable is currently embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the Mississauga First Nation in 2022 over four dams located on the Mississagi River on Lake Huron’s north shore.
The dams were first built in 2002 and later acquired by Brookfield but have caused flooding, displacement and destroyed fishing sites since they were constructed.
The community claims they have been denied any form of economic benefit from the projects, despite their environmental impact.
“If anything, we’ve been ignored,” Mississauga First Nation Chief Brent Niganobe told CBC last month. “There’s still impacts with the fish. There was a spill at one of them that we didn’t find out about till later, so it continues to create havoc on the environment.”
Brookfield was also sued by several conservation groups in Maine in 2021, while Carney was co-chair, for dams that killed swaths of Atlantic salmon, endangering their population.
The Sogamoso Dam in Colombia, owned by Brookfield’s Colombian business Isagen, was also sued by around 50 civil society groups in 2023 for the significant damage it caused to ecosystems and local communities.
Brookfield has denied any wrongdoing.
The Prime Minister’s Office and the Liberal Party denied True North’s request for comment.
send it to committee where it will be buried and forgotten, just like 400,000,000 slush fund