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In a small but significant step towards ending corporate impunity for destroying the environment and people's health, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Ecuadoran villagers should be allowed to try to get hold of Chevron assets in Canada, to collect on the $9.51 billion (USD) that Ecuadoran courts had awarded them for extensive pollution of the Amazon rainforest.

At MiningWatch we live and breathe news about mining. But what’s good news for companies and their investors may be bad news for affected communities and anyone concerned about issues like human rights, the environment, economic justice, government accountability… (the list is long). We have to give ourselves a slap up the head every once in a while and face the fact that mining controversies are not yet household issues. We need to remind ourselves that even the person on the street who cares about global issues may not be mulling over the latest news about dead rivers or peoples dispossessed due to a mining operation, whether in Canada or elsewhere.

The Canadian government’s big announcement for this year’s Prospectors and Developers Association conference (PDAC) wasn’t the automatic renewal of tax credits for “flow-through” shares -- a $100 million dollar a year subsidy for exploration companies -- or even a creative new way of diverting international development aid money to support Canadian mining projects in the developing world. No, it was a pair of investment agreements, one with Cameroon and one with Zambia.

Federal budgets weren’t always this controversial. Sure, there was a tough public debate around the financial direction the government was taking, but – that was all. Radical changes to environmental governance, public services, and the whole concept of the public interest? This is quite new.