Leoncia Ramos has lived her 65 years in the lush Dominican Republic town of La Piñita, but now says she is fearful for her health and wants to leave. She’s among 450 families asking the government and the company behind the Pueblo Viejo gold mine to be relocated because of concerns of pollution from the nearby mine. They allege the site, controlled by Canadian giant Barrick Mining Corp., is harming their health and the environment, and fear that if a tailings dam about a kilometer away were to collapse, it would be disastrous. Ramos’s community has spent 15 years fighting to have its concerns addressed and now says Canada, where Barrick Mining is headquartered, could play a role. In 2019, the Canadian government created an office of an ombudsperson to handle complaints from communities like Ramos’s. But the government has left the role vacant for the past year, and its work has seemingly come to a standstill. Canada is home to about half of the world’s publicly traded mining and mineral exploration companies, with operations both in Canada and overseas, including some of the world’s largest miners, like Barrick Mining. The government created the office of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) in 2019 to address human rights complaints about Canadian companies’ operations overseas. But the office has now been without an ombudsperson since May 2025, and advocates say its work has stalled at a critical moment, as demand for transition minerals and a changing geopolitical climate are driving…This article was originally published on Mongabay