Under Mark Carney’s leadership, global investment firm Brookfield was accused of breaching Indigenous rights or harming the environment in at least four countries, CBC Indigenous has found.
Carney, who is running for prime minister as Liberal leader, spent more than four years as vice chair and then chair at Brookfield Asset Management, where he focused on green investing and renewable energy.
During that period from 2020 to 2024, Brookfield businesses faced reports of serious human rights abuses in Brazil, Indigenous resistance in Colombia, a First Nation’s $100-million lawsuit in Ontario and an environmental dispute in Maine.
In Ontario, Maine and Colombia, Brookfield-owned hydroelectric dams and one wind farm allegedly threatened Indigenous rights or damaged the environment. In Brazil, international NGO Global Witness accused Brookfield and subsidiaries of deforestation and human rights violations, including the attempted eviction of an Indigenous group and breach of anti-slave labour law in 2021.
While the multinational conglomerate denied any wrongdoing, the disputes have raised questions about the former central banker and UN climate action envoy’s track record.
“I’m not trying to point a finger at him personally, but the company of Brookfield, no, is not measuring up to what they could do and should do, and now we’re saying must do, legally,” said Toronto lawyer Kate Kempton.
Kempton represents Mississauga First Nation in a lawsuit against Ontario and Brookfield Renewable. It was filed in 2022 over four dams on the Mississagi River on Lake Huron’s north shore.
It was filed as a last resort after “Brookfield shut the door in our face” when approached about a benefits-sharing agreement, said Kempton.
Carney advocates for more economic benefits-sharing agreements and economic reconciliation in his book, Values, but Mississauga First Nation’s chief says they didn’t experience that at all from Brookfield Renewable’s Canadian firm, Evolugen.
“If anything, we’ve been ignored,” Brent Niganobe told CBC Indigenous last month.
The chief said the dams in question devastated the community by destroying fishing sites, flooding territory and displacing people. While that was decades before Brookfield bought the dams in 2002, the First Nation alleges Brookfield benefited from prejudicial regulatory changes in 2019.
Meanwhile, the dams continue to impact the land, said Niganobe.
“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.”
From Maine to Colombia
In Maine, conservation groups sued Brookfield Renewable in 2021.
The groups alleged four dams on the Kennebec River were violating American federal law by repeatedly killing Atlantic salmon from an endangered population. The groups withdrew the claim in 2023, vowing to focus on the relicensing process instead, but they and local Wabanaki nations continue to advocate for the dams’ removal.
Failure to do so will “jeopardize the future of our sustenance fishing heritage,” said Chief Kirk Francis of the Penobscot Nation and Chief Clarissa Sabattis of the Houlton Band of Maliseet in a March 5 news release.
More than 4,000 kilometres away in northern Colombia, the Sogamoso Dam, owned by Brookfield’s Colombian business Isagen, caused significant damage to ecosystems and local communities, according to a 2023 collaborative report by some 50 civil society groups.
Meanwhile, the Wayuu people are resisting an Isagen wind farm in La Guajira, Colombia’s northernmost peninsula. Nacion Wayuu, a local NGO, accuses Isagen of invading their ancestral territories and advancing the project without consent.
Company has denied allegations
In a statement, the Carney campaign declined to address the reports directly.
“Mr. Carney left his career in business and finance to run for office and is focused exclusively on serving the people of Canada,” wrote Liberal spokesperson Jenna Ghassabeh.
“He is deeply committed to advancing reconciliation and upholding the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
Questions about Brookfield should be sent directly to the firm, she added.
Brookfield didn’t respond to media requests but it has previously denied the allegations.
In Ontario, Brookfield is mounting a court defence against Mississauga First Nation, while the U.S. federal energy regulator last month recommended the dams in Maine keep operating, provided Brookfield makes changes to allow endangered fish to pass through.
In Colombia, Brookfield called the allegation that its dam was damaging the environment and local communities “unfounded.” The company denied the allegations about Brazil, telling Global Witness it “unequivocally refute[s] the specific allegations of human rights abuses towards Indigenous tribes.”
There are positive stories, too.
In Australia, Brookfield Properties released “Reconciliation Action Plans” in 2022 and 2024. The firm reportedly pulled out of a controversial Australian gas project in 2021, amid local concerns about damage to culturally important ancient Indigenous petroglyphs.
Evolugen gave 4.4 hectares of land back to Michipicoten First Nation in Ontario in 2018, after elders raised concerns it would threaten an important spiritual and healing site, and in 2012, Brookfield Renewable gave about 40 hectares of land to the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge in New York state.
