Anglo American’s past failure to police De Beers at Ontario’s Victor diamond mine now threatens its US$70 billion “merger of equals” with Teck. Indigenous advocate Charles Hookimaw warns Ottawa that the company’s record shows promises can slide once regulators approve deals, directly challenging Anglo American’s pledge to honour every Canadian community agreement in its pitch to form Anglo Teck press release, 8 Sept 2025.
Proving Commitments Matters
Hookimaw, who managed lands and resources for Attawapiskat during the Victor mine’s life, outlined his objections in an early-October letter that Industry Minister Mélanie Joly must review before ruling on the merger’s “net benefit” test.
Recalling repeated spills and broken hiring targets at Victor, he wrote, “I observed first-hand that Anglo American consistently failed to ensure that its subsidiary lived up to its social responsibility and to respect the treaty rights of the Kattawapiskak First Nation” Turtle Island News, 20 Oct 2025. The line underscores a core risk: if Anglo couldn’t enforce standards at a wholly owned diamond mine, why would it safeguard Indigenous rights across a copper-heavy empire more than ten times larger?
Joly has already signalled impatience. Speaking to reporters on 16 September she said, “We wanted to make sure that there would be a net benefit to Canada. But I think right now that it’s not enough” Canadian Press via CKOM. Her blunt assessment shifts the burden of proof onto the companies and gives Hookimaw’s critique sharper teeth, because the Investment Canada Act lets Joly impose binding undertakings or block the deal outright.
Anglo Teck’s formal application touts C$4.5 billion in new Canadian spending over five years, including a C$2.4 billion life-extension at Highland Valley and up to C$750 million to modernise the Trail smelter press release, 8 Sept 2025. Yet money alone may not calm political unease. Ottawa’s recent conditions on Glencore’s coal purchase and its tougher foreign-investment rules show it now values enforceable social obligations as highly as capital inflows.
Control is the crux. Anglo promises that Indigenous rights will sit “indefinitely” at the core of Anglo Teck’s culture, but Hookimaw’s account implies that head-office culture did little to restrain De Beers when copper prices fell and operating costs rose. Joly can convert that lesson into concrete safeguards, for example annual Indigenous-employment targets tied to penalties or a termination clause that lets Canada unwind the merger if undertakings lapse. The minister’s leverage is strongest before the closing bell, and Hookimaw’s warning widens the political cost of approving weak terms.
If Anglo-Teck wants the deal cleared at all, it must move beyond glossy commitments and give Joly granular, enforceable metrics that Attawapiskat and other First Nations can audit. Failing that, the blind-eye charge will stick, and the merger’s Canadian headquarters will not nearly be enough.
