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Highlighting the slow progress around the implementation of greater Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) by the Canadian government and Canadian mining companies, Ian Thomson describes the efforts of diverse groups of civil society organisations to hold mining companies to account for their actions in African countries. In the face of these broad struggles, the author argues that lasting progress will derive principally from the ability of African and Canadian civil society organisations to work in solidarity against the negative environmental and human rights concerns associated with the mining sector.

A friend of mine from Toronto was travelling in Africa a couple of years ago, and when he presented his passport at the airport customs desk, he was asked, ‘So, are you a prospector?’ He smiled. There’s a good chance that a white, middle-aged Canadian guy arriving at an airport in sub-Saharan Africa is employed in the mining industry, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth in this case. As a matter of fact, he was working for my organisation, KAIROS, a Canadian inter-church agency, to develop solidarity partnerships with mining activists and communities affected by Canadian mining companies in Africa.

KAIROS is far from alone. Trade unions, faith-based groups, environmentalists, human rights groups and other civil society groups in Canada have been leading a focused campaign over the past several years to hold Canadian mining companies accountable for their human rights and environmental record internationally.

In response to public pressure and an alarming parliamentary committee report adopted in June 2005, the Canadian government hosted a series of national roundtables on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the Canadian extractive industry in developing countries. The year-long process brought together industry reps, human rights experts, academics, civil society organisations and responsible investors to discuss and debate how Canada could promote more responsible practices in the overseas operations of Canadian mining, oil and gas companies.

Civil society groups in Canada formed the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA) to engage in the roundtable process. The CNCA brings together a diverse group of NGOs, churches and trade unions calling for more accountability mechanisms in Canada to regulate the overseas activities of Canadian companies. The rallying cry for the network has been: ‘Mandatory, not voluntary!’ Voluntary codes of conduct and self-regulation have been seen as a failure in the extractive sector. Hence the need for government action to ensure internationally recognised standards are being met by Canadian companies operating abroad. In March 2007 following the CSR roundtables, a groundbreaking consensus report with 27 policy recommendations was submitted to the Canadian government, which included a proposal for a new Canadian CSR Framework as its centrepiece. The framework consists of CSR standards for extractive companies overseas, public reporting requirements, and an extractives ombudsman to receive complaints from interested parties who want to report instances of non-compliance with the standards. If adopted, the CSR Framework will put Canada at the forefront of corporate responsibility in this sector. The framework would make government support to the mining sector conditional on compliance with the CSR standards. For example, Canadian embassies and high commissions abroad will often play a critical role in opening doors for mining companies. Under the new framework, embassies would be required to assess a company’s social and environmental performance against the CSR standards before offering anything more than the minimum consular services available to all Canadian citizens. Likewise, diplomatic support would not be extended to projects that are found to violate the standards.

The same would be true of financing through public agencies like Export Development Canada (EDC). A crown corporation wholly owned by the Government of Canada, EDC facilitated CAD$22 billion in mining, oil and gas business internationally through its financing and insurance activities in 2007. These business transactions would be subject to investigation by the proposed extractives ombudsman.

However, the Canadian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has not yet adopted the roundtable recommendations or even issued a formal response to the roundtable process.

It hasn’t helped that the industry association for junior mining companies, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), participated in the roundtable process only to turn against it once it was concluded. No sooner had the ink dried on the roundtable recommendations did PDAC reverse its position and start lobbying against some of the key policy recommendations. Without the support of the junior mining companies, the government may have lost the political will to implement even the modest recommendation from the roundtables.

Why modest? Because the roundtable consensus represents only a first step towards greater accountability for Canadian mining companies operating internationally. Some crucial elements of a robust accountability framework, such as legal mechanisms to hold Canadian companies accountable for complicity in human rights violations internationally, were left out of the consensus recommendations. In addition, the need to obtain the free and informed consent of communities prior to developing mining projects is mentioned in the final report of the roundtables as a contentious issue that could not gain consensus from all stakeholders.

It’s instructive to look at these two contentious issues – legal accountability and community consent – within the broader context of Canadian foreign policy. The lack of legal accountability mechanisms in Canada for corporate activities abroad has left affected communities with few options to pursue justice and seek redress. As a result, more indirect routes are being tried. For instance, the Presbyterian Church in Sudan is currently pursuing Canadian-based Talisman Energy in US courts for its alleged complicity in human rights violations committed while operating in the oil fields of Sudan. Why in US courts? Because foreign nations can launch civil suits against companies registered in the US under an obscure piece of legislation called the Alien Tort Claims Act, or ATCA (Talisman also has operations in the US). The Government of Canada has done everything it can to side with Talisman and have the case dismissed. The Canadian embassy in Washington has even liaised with the US State Department, possibly in an effort to bring political pressure to bear on the case. However, the one thing Canada has not done is provide an avenue for the case to be heard in Canadian courts by enacting legislation similar to the ATCA. Earlier this year, a private member’s bill was introduced in the House of Commons to establish such an act, but the bill died on the order paper when an election was called in September 2008.

Recognition of communities’ rights to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is an equally if not greater challenge. While the term ‘policy vacuum’ might best describe the state of legal accountability in Canada, ‘outright hostility’ would better capture the current government’s position regarding the recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights internationally. In 2007, when the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was being finalised, Canada led the charge to block its adoption. The Declaration was eventually adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2007, against the Canada’s wishes and those of a handful of other standout nations. Canada’s opposition to the Declaration is believed to be driven largely by concerns about natural resources, and who controls the rich mineral and petroleum reserves in the northern reaches of our country.

Clearly it will be challenging to persuade this government that it is on the wrong side of history on this particular issue, and that reconciliation with indigenous peoples in Canada will never occur while their rights are systematically denied. Fortunately the three major opposition parties in Canada’s parliament support the UN Declaration, and will continue to press the government to reverse its position. For the CNCA, the right of indigenous peoples, including the need to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of communities at the earliest stage of a project, must be included in any CSR standard that applies to the extractive industry if it is to be credible and effective.

Civil society groups have likewise kept up the pressure on the government to develop and implement corporate accountability measures for the extractive sector since the CSR roundtables concluded at the end of 2006. For instance, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled to Tanzania in November 2007, the CNCA highlighted the fact that he put more emphasis on meeting with Barrick Gold, the Toronto-based gold mining giant, than with a Tanzanian civil society concerned about the impacts of foreign controlled mining operations in its country. Since Harper’s visit, Canadian civil society has continued to investigate how Canada’s high commission in Tanzania may be interfering with attempts to reform the country’s mining code. In July 2008, the Africa-Canada Forum (ACF), a Canadian NGO coalition whose work focuses on Africa, wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, demanding to know what the Canadian high commission was doing in the ongoing mining reform process in Tanzania. This fall ACF had follow-up meetings with officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs, calling for Canada not to meddle in decisions regarding the setting of royalties and revenue sharing schemes being considered by legislators in Tanzania. The CNCA has witnessed a pattern of Canadian embassy and high commission interventions when developing countries attempt to reform their mining codes to garner a larger slice of profits or to introduce stronger social and environmental regulations.

The one tangible policy change to come out of the 2006 roundtable process was Canada’s long-awaited endorsement of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). This global initiative championed by the UK government encourages resource-rich countries in the global South and extractive sector companies to report publicly on royalties, taxes and other revenues. Revenue transparency in the extractive sector is largely an anti-corruption measure, but could potentially be harnessed by civil society groups in the South to hold their governments to account for how a country’s resource wealth is allocated. Canada was a late joiner, but finally did sign on to the EITI in 2007.

Revenue transparency is a goal that Canada can now support but when southern countries demand more of those revenues, it seems that our diplomats see it as their job to fight a rearguard action and ensure more of the wealth flows home to Canada. As we continue to see this pattern repeated, the lessons of the CSR roundtables do not seem to be sinking in within the Canadian foreign service.

The key to cracking the legislative impasse in Canada will no doubt be forging more North-South alliances for corporate accountability. Struggles in the South to win respect for indigenous rights, to keep natural resource wealth for the benefit of local populations, and to oppose environmentally destructive mining projects will continue to grow. Likewise, efforts by Canadians to win corporate accountability measures at home to control corporate activities overseas will rely on the strength and conviction of partners in the South who can communicate their demands and stories to the people of Canada and to our elected leaders.

As more and more Canadians hear about the impacts of Canadian-based companies in the developing world, they are calling for action to regulate these practices and end the associated human rights violations and ecological destruction. Who knows, one day Canadians might even be able to travel abroad again without being taken for prospectors and plunderers.

* Ian Thomson coordinates the Corporate Social Responsibility Program of KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, which unites 11 Canadian churches and church agencies working for justice and peace. Ian also acts as the chair of the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/