Rebuttal comes as shareholders launched an investigation over possible false and misleading statements made by the miner about its Pebble copper-gold project in Alaska.
Report by the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) says the country is not in a good position to benefit from the increasing number of companies ready to make new and significant investments.
The world’s No.1 iron ore miner produced 349 million tonnes of the steelmaking ingredient in 2016, helped partly by the opening of its massive S11D mine.