Thank you.
Madam Lalonde, I think you know about our human rights impact assessment initiative, but just to go back a little bit, at the time we began this project, we put out an open call for anyone to submit possible projects that we could look at. We were seeking to better understand the human rights impact of foreign investment. So we opened this call to all sectors, all parties. Anyone could submit a project. We received 46 proposals. Very interestingly, of those, 43 were related to mining companies and the impact of mining companies.
For us, that was an indicator of this particular sector's influence over human rights. Perhaps it's because it's so visible to people, but nevertheless, there was a significant concern in the public domain with respect to mining companies.
The other thing we found was that all of the proposals we received were for projects that were already operational, so in fact there was an existing conflict under way. We were surprised to learn that we didn't receive any proposals regarding projects that were in the pipeline, planned projects, new projects, because--in response to your question--the best approach might be to do an impact assessment before the project takes place so that different protection mechanisms can be implemented.
What is the reason for that? After the project, we worked with one large Canadian mining company to try to do an impact assessment before the project was implemented. We ran into considerable obstacles in doing this. There were problems with disclosure. There were problems with access to information. There were problems with the subcontractors. There was a problem with the host government, which didn't want to agree.
These are the kinds of struggles that people are having. The best approach, naturally, would be to do an impact assessment before a project was under way and the human rights violations experienced.