No, I don't believe I'm just a messenger to the Minister of International Trade.
What do I do? I want to start by saying that there is no review process in place right now. I think it's actually really important to construct that in a way that's going to take into account the views of a lot of stakeholders, not just my view about how we should proceed in this case. I want to be really clear about that. If this office is going to be credible, I think it is going to have to draw on the expertise of a lot of people in constructing the question of how we would address this.
My lens on this is absolutely that mining companies are very powerful actors in developing countries. I think that is one of the main reasons NGOs are increasingly engaging with the sector. It can be a very powerful actor for doing very positive things in developing countries. The flip side of doing damage to people in the field is that it can also have a very positive impact. It can raise environmental standards and labour standards. It can do a lot in terms of social and community development outcomes that maybe the government can't do and that even NGOs can't necessarily do, because NGOs may not have the same level of access to government as the companies would.
I still have to come back to the question of why. And I don't understand the answer to that. I think that is actually a very important question. Why are we hearing these stories? Why is it that companies are engaged in this kind of terrible behaviour? We need to understand that in order to build the proper tool kit to deal with it.