Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members of Parliament.
I'm honoured to have the opportunity to speak before the committee on a matter that greatly affects both Canada and Argentina. I speak before you today in two capacities, first as a former Secretary of the Environment of Argentina serving under the previous and present administrations; and second, as the president of the Center for Human Rights and Environment, a globally prized organization over which I now preside, based in Córdoba, Argentina. My position as environment secretary of Argentina was equivalent to a ministerial position in Canada. I was the highest environmental federal authority and I responded directly to the chief of cabinet of ministers and to the President.
It is not unknown to you that irresponsible mining activities are one of the most controversial types of industrial investments. This controversy is why the sort of debate you're having today about Canadian companies operating abroad, financed by Canadian taxpayers, is so important to promote more responsible investment worldwide. I commend you, your country's parliamentarians, for taking on this extremely serious and very difficult debate.
As environment secretary from 2006 to 2008, I focused Argentina on deepening our efforts at environmental protection after decades of mostly environmental interference. Among the many tasks and achievements to note during this period, I might mention having made substantial headway in forestry protection, corporate compliance of environmental codes, the creation of a federal environmental prosecutorial institution, and regulation of environmental insurance, among other issues.
Internationally, my secretariat was extremely active in spearheading climate change negotiations, including proposing, right here in Canada at the Montreal Protocol meeting, critical commitments that were approved to phase out ozone-depleting substances with high global-warming potential. Despite this good news for my country, I'm sorry to say that one of the areas where we had the most difficulty was in the mining sector.
You're obviously aware of the very large mine investments run by Canadian companies like that of Barrick Gold in Argentina. Unfortunately, far from being the beacon model of sustainable mining that we would hope for in the 21st century, Barrick Gold is a modern example of a powerful economic giant that unscrupulously manipulates local politics and is skirting environmental and social controls to maximize profit, minimize investment risk, and ignore local cultures and communities to the detriment of the greater global objectives of sustainable development.
As the former environmental secretary, I can personally attest to Barrick's tactics of obstruction to the control and compliance powers of the state. I have seen Barrick's use of forceful propaganda and traffic of influence on public officials and its intense marketing and PR gimmicks with the local communities. I approached Barrick in 2006 as environment secretary to exercise my jurisdictional authority over the San Guillermo Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO site and national park in the province of San Juan, where Barrick's Veladero mine is located, with the objective of installing contamination-measuring units through the area. Barrick refused to give my team access to the lands in their mining territory and stalled all subsequent efforts to facilitate such entry until weather conditions changed so drastically in the early winter months that my team's work in the area was no longer physically possible.
I had also engaged with provisional and national authorities to attempt to reform the mining code and place the monitoring and control of the impacts of mining activities within the jurisdiction of the secretary of the environment. The mining sector opposed such participation of Argentinian environmental institutions and lobbied the government and the Congress strongly to obstruct these efforts, maintaining jurisdiction of mining operations solely within the mining agencies, whose objective is the promotion of mining, and not environmental controls.
In 2008, the Congress unanimously passed a glacier protection law. The new glacier law would in fact prohibit mining on, under, or in glacier parameters, something that probably sounds quite reasonable to Canadians, as you come from one of the most glacier-rich areas of the world. Well, so do we.
Canadian companies operating in Argentina did not want a glacier protection law to limit their mining prospects and subsequently pressured the President into vetoing the law. If the President would not veto the law, Barrick would work to block other financial bills that were critical to stabilizing the Argentine economy during the global financial crisis. The President capitulated to Barrick's pressure and vetoed the bill, which has become known euphemistically as the Barrick veto.
Barrick has also pushed forward with several controversial mining projects in Argentina and, time and time again, shows that the company acts in bad faith with respect to the social and environmental community concerns that such large mining interests entail. One of Barrick's gold mining ventures, called Pascua Lama, occurs right on top of five glaciers. Unbelievably, Barrick conveniently failed to mention these facts in its original environmental impact assessment. It was only after communities protested the site choice and pointed out the presence of glaciers that Barrick admitted its mining venture was indeed taking place on at least five glaciers. However, by then, and only from prospecting impacts, much of the glaciers had already been severely impacted by Barrick's exploration. There is still strong resistance to the Pascua Lama project from local indigenous and farming communities that are greatly concerned with water management, contamination, and impacts on natural habitat and reserves.
As environment secretary of Argentina, I fought hard for the promotion of sustainable development and for accountability. I confronted many corporate sectors, engaging them in costly but responsible cleanup. Many did not like this intervention, but ultimately they understood that their responsibility to respect human rights and environmental standards was critical to their own survival and sustainability.
The mining sector, I'm sorry to say, responded quite differently from the rest. They were more resistant, more aggressive, and more dangerous. My closest staff and I were personally and physically threatened following our mining intervention. My children were frightened, my office was wire-tapped, my staff was bought, and the public officials that once controlled Barrick for me became paid employees of Barrick Gold. My mission and our mission as a nation to control mining was jeopardized. Ultimately, I was forced to resign due to insurmountable pressure from companies like Barrick Gold, which ultimately get their way when our institutions fail to control their performance and compliance.
As the maximum environmental authority of my country, I have witnessed first-hand that companies like Barrick Gold do not abide by internationally recognized environmental regulations. I have seen human rights violations from the mining sector that would not be tolerated in Canada but are accepted as the cost of doing business in countries like Argentina. This is why it is so important that you continue this debate and find ways to promote accountability of the mining sector from your vantage point. It is also important to understand that the image of Canada is inevitably related to the behaviour of these companies. When Canadian mining companies act in a manner that is not befitting the true Canadian image, the reputation of Canada and its people suffer.
I don't ask you to be against mining; I do ask you to be against impunity. I don't ask you to be against Canadian mining companies; I do ask you to ensure that he Canadian mining companies acting abroad are accountable to your own highest standards. I don't ask you to intrude on the sovereignty of countries that wish to promote the mining industry, but I do plead with you to consider that the decisions you make about holding Canadian companies to account for their behaviour can and do influence the way they will do business.
Even the smallest improvement in an accountability mechanism here in Canada may go a long way to avoid the historical problems that this sector has visited on many populations around the world. I ask you to consider the predicament you have before you and look for ways to influence the behavioural pattern and minimize the impact of the foreign operations of Canadian mining companies financed by your taxpayers.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.