Bill C-300 – Mining Sustainability Working Group

Bill C-300 – CSR Debate in Canada and Abroad

Blow is an article from the Vancouver Sun.

It outlines some of the debate that surrounds the bill, particularly around the question on monitoring and investigation activities that would be undertaken by the government in order to ensure that companies are complying with the guidelines.

Sat Jan 16 2010
Byline: Fiona Anderson

Hot debate on corporate responsibility abroad

As long as Canadian mining companies work in emerging markets, complaints about adverse effects on the local community are going to arise. But how can Canadians be sure that local companies aren’t misbehaving?

MiningWatch Canada is advocating the passage of Bill C-300 — “An Act respecting Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas in Developing Countries.” The private member’s bill, brought forward by Liberal MP John McKay, passed second reading and was before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs when the prime minister recessed Parliament until March. The prorogation order allows reinstatement of private members bills and, if passed, the bill would force the government to create corporate guidelines consistent with Canada’s international commitments on human rights and environmental sustainability. Companies that fail to comply with the guidelines would be ineligible for funding from Export Development Canada.

But the mining industry is against the bill, not because it doesn’t want to comply with the standards, it says, but because the bill doesn’t provide for funding — no private member’s bill can — and the guidelines that need to be followed are too vague. On top of that, three years of roundtable discussions have led to a four-pronged approach that includes developing guidelines and appointing a corporate social responsibility (CSR) counsellor, who was appointed in October. “The problem with C-300 is it really sets all of that aside,” said Laureen Whyte, vice-president of sustainability and operations at the Association of Mineral Exploration British Columbia.

“It’s not based on the outcomes of those roundtable discussions. It instead offers up a pretty punitive way of investigating complaints, and it frankly doesn’t, and it can’t, provide for the resources that’s needed to do proper investigations.” The CSR counsellor, on the other hand, has the funds needed to do the necessary investigations, which can be costly. “It’s really hard from afar to identify what’s really going on, and so you need to have local information that you can rely on,” Whyte said. “You also need to have some ability to assess the factors that are at play. And it takes a huge amount of resources to do that.” Without the ability to investigate, the situation remains as it is now, a media play, Whyte said. It’s easy for people to complain that companies are making them sick or poisoning their water, especially to the media, Whyte said. The CSR counsellor can take those complaints and “create a space for constructive dialogue,” to try to find a resolution.
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Bill C-300

There has been a lot of debate about the proposed Bill C-300. In the Mining Engineering department of UBC, Professor John Meech recently emailed the faculty and graduate students a link to a mining weekly article, outlining the arguments for and against Bill C-300. Dr. Dawn Mills proposed an open formal debate.

A bit of background on Bill C-300:

Bill C-300 was introduced to the Canadian House of Commons in February of 2009 by Liberal Member of Parliament, John McKay. The bill is intended to regulate Canadian mining companies operating in developing countries by creating a guideline for accountability to which companies must comply. The bill will also create a sytem by which complaints against companies can be filed and brought to the attention of Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
In August, Mining Watch released its opinion on the bill. Its position is largely positive, stating that this bill is “the best chance we have as Canadians to assure that Canadian extractive companies follow human rights and environmental best practices when they operate overseas“. On November 26, 2009, a joint standing committee released its position on bill C-300. This standing committee was made up of representatives from Barrick Gold, Kinross Gold, and Goldcorp. The committee is concerned that the bill is too simplistic and one-dimensional, which will cause undue economic burden and unjustified harm to the reputation of Canadian mining companies. The committee goes on to state that bill C-300 “is unnecessary as Canadian companies are already subject to a variety of domestic and international rules, regulations and guidelines holding companies to account in the area of CSR“.

In my opinion (or rather, my questions)…

Is this bill really our best hope? Or will it simply cause mining companies to leave Canada and set-up shop in less regulated regions? If Canada truly is over-regulated to the point of economic ruin, then one wonders: why would companies operate here at all? And if these companies are already made accountable through existing policies, why do incidents of social and environmental degradation mining companies with headquarter in Canada still occur? (e.g. HudBay Minerals Inc. in Guatemala, TVI Pacific in Mindanao and former Argentine minister’s recent complaints to the House of Commons). Who benefits from this bill being passed? And, who benefits from having these mining companies continue to operate as they are? Canada certainly benefits by having these companies hold headquarters within its borders economically through jobs and taxes… don’t they?
The truths in all of this can be found within the underlying motivations of the parties involved.

Any thoughts?