Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for coming here today, Ms. Evans, and congratulations on your appointment to this position.
Let me start by saying first that the round table conference done by the government and the stakeholders was a very extensive consultation process involving the NGOs, the mining community, and everybody else. Through that extensive round table conference, we came out with a lot of recommendations, including your appointment and the setting up of the institute for excellence. This puts Canada into the forefront of corporate social responsibility in reference to other countries.
What surprises me most in this whole thing is that we are not letting that process go through; we're not letting them see what has happened. If there were concerns and everything on issues that came out after this round table conference and its recommendations, and on what you have been talking about, and two years down the road from now nothing much had happened and the stories we just heard here were to keep repeating themselves, then yes, I can see something different coming out of here. This is an evolutionary process.
The problem with this bill is that it has jumped all of that. It has made assumptions right at the beginning in saying that this, this, or this thing is going to happen, not taking into account the tremendous amount of consultation in that process. As a matter of fact, this bill that has been brought here has had absolutely a very poor consultation process, and now, when all the stakeholders are coming out, we can hear the author of this bill trying to find ways and things to amend it, but he should have been part.... I don't know whether he was also part and parcel of that round table conference, where he would have heard about what the other stakeholders were doing. What we are having here is his selected people coming in here to tell us and not doing this....
The main point here, as you have pointed out, is that this is a beginning process, that this is a process that will build up. This is a process that will put Canada on top.
The Talisman issue in Sudan was a clear case of how the evolution moved forward, but the vacuum was filled by other countries that had a very low social standard of corporate social responsibility. Today in Africa, China is all over the place. As you rightly pointed out, countries want to develop their extractives, their resources, for the betterment of the people.
So my first question to you here is this. In your opinion, is there any other country that you know of in any part of the world that has a counsellor or a similar position and a centre of excellence that is supported by all stakeholders? Or are we number one in the world in breaking ground on this one?
Second, don't you think it would logical with your power as you build up...? In your testimony, you stated many times that you need more facts and everything to comment. Wouldn't it make logical common sense for us to let you do your work, to go ahead with everything here, before we come out with something that is very negative for the industry?