Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to talk about this important subject.
My name is Tony Andrews. I'm the executive director of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. My colleague Bernarda Elizalde, before joining the PDAC, spent a number of years advising mining companies on how to apply CSR practices in Central and South America, so she has an interesting perspective to add to the discussion today.
The PDAC is a national association focused on mineral exploration. Our 7,000 members work all over the world and include a large number of junior exploration companies. The Canadian juniors lead the world in numbers of companies and proportion of total funds they raise and spend worldwide on exploration and development. They are small businesses dependent on the capital markets for raising funds. Normally, they do not avail themselves of debt capital from banks and financial institutions. Our members are world leaders in the financing and technical areas and also in the emerging field of CSR. However, we are still in the early stages of understanding CSR development, and there is much work that will be done. It's an evolving process.
I was a member of the advisory group of the CSR national round table process along with a member of our board of directors. The association publicly supported the advisory group report, with some commentary and recommendations. PDAC is in the business of creating leading practice. It has recently launched what we call e3 Plus. It's a comprehensive, online framework for responsible exploration, and stands for excellence in three areas: social responsibility, environmental stewardship, and health and safety. It has an information-educational component consisting of principles, a guidance document, and three comprehensive tool kits. This was launched in March of this year. It also has an accountability component, which is in development at present. This will consist of performance objectives, reporting guidelines, and a system of verification.
As we understand it, the issue before this committee is how to ensure two things: the continuous improvement in CSR practices, and the accountability of Canadian companies operating in developing countries. We believe that the most effective way of accomplishing this will be on the basis of a systematic, integrated approach that will involve a combination of both voluntary and mandatory mechanisms, basically similar to the recommendations of the national CSR round table advisory group report and the CSR strategy recently introduced by the Canadian government. In our opinion, the legislation proposed by BillC-300 would not contribute to the objectives of either improved CSR practice or accountability. In fact, it will pose significant risk to the Canadian industry.
Over the next few minutes I'm going to do three things: I'm going to review some key realities that define CSR at present; I'm going to measure these against the approach contemplated by Bill C-300; and I'm going to define what we feel are key opportunities for making progress in CSR performance and in accountability.
Here are some current realities about CSR. Over the past 15 years, the focus in public priorities has shifted from environmental issues to social issues and, most recently, to an emphasis on human rights and ethical practice. The mining industry has made significant progress with environmental and social issues. Social issues are much more complex, given that they are centred on human relations and human behaviour and complicated by different cultures, values, beliefs, perceptions, and needs—often competing needs.
Environmental matters lend themselves to a prescriptive regulatory regime. Matters of corporate social responsibility do not. Any standard or guidelines for CSR must be comprehensive enough to satisfy public expectations of corporate behaviour. At the same time, they must be scalable to the size and the nature of the company and the project as well as to the stage of exploration or development.
Standards must be flexible to accommodate the wide variety of geographical, cultural, and environmental circumstances where projects occur. The reality is that what will work at one site will not necessarily work at another, so the successful application of CSR will be based on the experience and judgment of industry managers at the site.
What is our level of understanding of CSR? Well, it's a relatively new phenomenon that is still being assimilated. It involves rapidly evolving expectations and uncertainty about how to deliver on those expectations. Until recently there were no comprehensive international guidelines that attempted to define for the exploration business what CSR is and how it should deliver on those expectations. E3 Plus, which I described before, is an attempt to accomplish this.
Most companies are trying to apply CSR. They believe that they are applying CSR, using common sense, oftentimes, and homegrown approaches, but they have nothing against which to benchmark their practices. Therefore, there is wide variability in the manner and approach of their applications. This is where guidelines and assistance to our members come into play.
It is not only about human rights. Human rights are central to the issue of CSR, but it is not only about human rights. CSR involves broad dimensions of social responsibility, environmental stewardship, and health and safety, all encompassed in government regulations, industry good practice, and international instruments and conventions. It's a very broad and complex area.
How many allegations have been made against Canadian mining companies? Research conducted this year by the Canadian Centre for the Study of Resource Conflict revealed that over the past ten years there have been a total of 171 alleged CSR violations by mining companies. These are reported from around the world and from all sources. About 50% of these allegations were reported by advocacy NGOs. Of the 171 allegations, 56 involved Canadian companies. That is an average of fewer than six alleged cases a year.
Since its inception in 2000, the IFC compliance advisor ombudsman, the CAO, has received and processed a total of 110 complaints. Of these, there were eight complaints involving four mining companies. Of these, one was Canadian and another was partly Canadian owned.
I'll just add that as of June 2008, just prior to the global financial crisis, there were about 1,000 Canadian companies working in over 100 countries on 5,000 projects outside Canada. I think those numbers put this into context.
Given these realities, how does Bill C-300 measure up as a practical, effective system of applying accountability? It is an investigative, punitive system based on assigning blame and imposing sanctions. It will be dependent on the difficult process of collecting evidence in foreign jurisdictions. It will try to discriminate between right and wrong.
How can this approach be rationalized in a situation that is so fluid and variable and that is complicated by differing cultures, beliefs, perceptions, and needs? How will companies be judged against a set of guidelines that will need to be scalable and flexible? How will companies know where the boundaries of compliance are? How will the minister determine whether a contravention has occurred? Why would we introduce such a negative, high-risk approach in a situation that cries out for information, education, and assistance and that involves so few cases of proven intent to harm? Why would we introduce such a punitive approach prior to the establishment of fundamental definitions, basic information, and clarity of expectations?
These are fundamental problems that cannot be corrected through the artful rewriting or amending of Bill C-300. There are additional significant legal issues with the bill, which I'm sure my colleague, Mr. Wisner, is going to describe.
Canadian mining companies are already accountable in many different ways and on many different levels, but we believe there are some areas where accountability can be improved. The first and most important one is host country governance capacity-building. This is a highly significant area. This is the seat of accountability for Canadian companies and it lies with the host government where they are working. So attention and resources should be focused on governance capacity-building in those countries where governance is a critical issue.
The second area I would suggest we have a look at is access to capital and strengthening the requirements in securities regulations around materiality. This is related to disclosure and reporting of CSR matters to investors and the public.
Significant improvements for industry need to occur in the area of due diligence and risk assessment, as well as community engagement. That's our own assessment. This will contribute to accountability as preventative mechanisms.
Finally, applying the fundamental building blocks of accountability to industry good practice guidance makes a lot of sense to us. This includes performance measures, reporting requirements, an ombudsman function to take care of a grievance, and a form of verification. To us, the advantage of this kind of approach is that it's focused on the preventive, it helps companies perform better, it's broad in scope so it will capture a large part of the industry, and it's upfront and integrated into the business practice.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.