Liberal leader Mark Carney’s former company Brookfield Asset Management has been accused of breaching indigenous rights in Canada, the US, Brazil and Columbia.
Allegations include environmental exploitations and overriding indigenous treaties to build dams, wind farms, and other such infrastructure.
Carney chaired Brookfield up until his January 16 Liberal leadership announcement, when he claimed to have resigned from his position. He helped orchestrate the Brookfield move from Toronto to the US in late 2024/early 2025 amid American trade war threats — Carney said he was not involved in the move, but was caught in a lie after paperwork came out proving otherwise.
Between his role as chair and earlier role as co-chair, Carney led Brookfield for four years. During that time he was also economic adviser to then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Between 2020 and 2024, Brookfield businesses faced accusations 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, according to the CBC.
Multiple Brookfield-owned hydroelectric dams and a wind farm allegedly either violated indigenous rights or damaged the environment in Ontario, Maine and Colombia.
Further, international NGO Global Witness accused Brookfield and its subsidiaries of deforestation and human rights violations in Brazil, where the corporation tried to illegally evict an indigenous group and breach anti-slave labour law in 2021.
Brookfield and Carney have denied being at fault in any of these cases.
"I'm not trying to point a finger at [Carney] 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," Toronto lawyer Kate Kempton, who represents Mississauga First Nation in a lawsuit launched in 2022 against Ontario and Brookfield Renewable, told the state broadcaster.
The lawsuit involves four dams on the Mississagi River, the northern shore of Lake Huron, and was launched after Kempton attempted to work with Brookfield on a benefits-sharing agreement.
However, Carney’s corporation had no interest in working together.
"Brookfield shut the door in our face," said Kempton.
