Foreign Affairs committee  Not so much as bureaucrats do we have opinions about it, but rather we've tried to look at it from the point of view of how it could be implemented, how it would function. I think from that perspective there were a number of points on which we thought we needed maybe additional clarification.

Foreign Affairs committee  To the best of my knowledge, Danish legislation requires mandatory CSR reporting for companies of a certain size. Some countries require a certain percentage of revenues to go towards CSR activities. That's the extent of CSR legislation around the world, as far as I know. Generally speaking, CSR is not legislated, partly because it's so vast.

Foreign Affairs committee  No, sir.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, sir.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. What distinguishes Bill C-300 is that it creates a mandatory set of guidelines, whereas CSR in international circles is generally understood to be voluntary, with different applications for different companies in different places. It is broadly accepted to be voluntary. In this case, these would be mandatory guidelines, with consequences for non-compliance.

Foreign Affairs committee  I wouldn't be able to judge that.

Foreign Affairs committee  Right; yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm sorry, can you clarify a bit? Is that their ability to get insurance through EDC?

Foreign Affairs committee  I wouldn't want to speculate on whether or not other institutions would follow suit, but certainly EDC would be placed, I think, in quite a great deal of difficulty.

Foreign Affairs committee  Possibly.

Foreign Affairs committee  I haven't read in here anything that would compel participation.

Foreign Affairs committee  From my understanding of what the bill says, the minister would conduct an examination or an investigation into the complaint, including, as it says here in subclause 4(4), “evidence from witnesses outside of Canada”.

Foreign Affairs committee  Without compliance from the company, yes. The consideration, though, is how that would be done outside of Canada. Generally in international law it's understood that if you are going to investigate in another country, that constitutes an enforcement activity.

Foreign Affairs committee  We would normally go through their courts for that.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, but we would normally ask the courts of the host government--