Thank you, Mac.
Honourable members, thank you for this opportunity to address you today.
I am Dina Aloi. I'm the vice-president responsible for corporate social responsibility for Goldcorp.
As background, I have a degree in rural sociology and I have a master's degree in anthropology. I became involved in the mining industry and joined Goldcorp after 15 years of working on human rights and international development issues with NGOs. My dedication to these important issues is unchanged, and I'm pleased to have the opportunity to bring my experience to a company where my commitment to human rights is mirrored.
This committee has repeatedly heard the rhetorical question: if it's true that Canadian mining companies conduct their operations in accordance with the highest standards of corporate social responsibility and are held to account for their mining practices abroad, why are they opposed to this bill? Our comments today will answer that question. The short answer is Bill C-300 will not actually get at companies that operate with low CSR standards, but will, instead, do serious harm to responsible Canadian companies. In all of our submissions today, we want to outline how and why this bill will harm responsible Canadian mining companies.
This bill does nothing to improve CSR or build capacity in foreign countries, something that we believe is critical to long-term success. This bill would create a new adversarial complaint and investigation process that is sure to be exploited by traditional opponents of mining. It would also expose responsible Canadian mining companies to stigma and reputational damage from a poorly conceived investigation process through a ministerial office ill-equipped for this purpose.
In order for the committee to understand why this bill is so harmful, it's critical for the committee to understand the environment in which we operate globally. Our industry is often confronted with false allegations of misconduct in countries in which we operate. Regardless of merit, once made, allegations have lasting impacts on our industry's reputation. In my experience, evidence that proves an allegation is false, or a retraction of a false allegation, is often ignored.
For example, an extraordinarily serious claim was made that a Canadian mining company was involved in the murder of 50 artisanal miners in Tanzania, all of whom were said to have been buried alive. At the request of an NGO, these claims were extensively investigated by credible independent sources, including the World Bank. The company acquired the property in 1999, three years after the incident was alleged to have occurred. In 2002, the ombudsman of the World Bank undertook to assess these allegations. A comprehensive investigation into these allegations was made and they were found to be completely without foundation. Although it was completely cleared, and indeed the ombudsman was highly critical of the lack of accountability of the NGOs that made the allegations, these serious and extraordinary allegations continue to be made against this Canadian company, including at these committee hearings.
I have two further examples of untrue allegations that, if this bill were in effect, would likely have ended up on the minister's desk and had to have been investigated. We were recently accused by a Canadian NGO of organizing a coup. We were also accused of contaminating water in another country with a chemical we didn't even use. Both allegations were completely false. If they had been subject to this bill and investigated by the crown, they would have been provided with false credibility, causing undue harm and alarm with our stakeholders and shareholders, our employees and our community partners, and it would have harmed our corporate reputation.
At this point, it's easy to accuse Canadian mining companies operating abroad of all manner of unethical and outrageous behaviour. Correcting the record, however, is very difficult. You may ask then, if we're already operating in an environment in which complaints get made and can live on in perpetuity, why would the complaints process under this bill cause us particular concern?
To be unfairly accused by an individual or an NGO in a press release or a blog causes harm. This harm is of an entirely different magnitude when this complaint is investigated by the minister of the crown, which suggests that the complaint has some merit, and, under this bill, requires an investigation by our own government.
The bill does provide a mechanism for the minister to dismiss a complaint without investigation if it is determined to be false, frivolous, vexatious or made in bad faith. However, for a serious accusation coming from a remote foreign country, it is impossible to conceive that a minister could dismiss the complaint without an investigation and the expenditure of resources. Equally troubling is that this bill does not contemplate any consequences whatsoever for an individual or organization that makes frivolous, vexatious, or untrue allegations, or which does so repeatedly. At best, a retraction from the minister will be printed in the Gazette many months later, not a widely read publication in many circles, after the harm is done, which will go entirely unnoticed.
The relationship between Canadian mining companies and host countries relies on mutual respect. This would be seriously strained through the complaints and investigation process. Canadian companies operating abroad strive to build respectful relationships with local stakeholders and the governments of the host countries. Weakening these positive relationships will only harm our competitiveness in the mining industry and our ability to influence non-Canadian companies to adopt high standards of CSR. Our non-Canadian competitors, many of whom operate at lower CSR standards, would be more than happy to take advantage of a decline in our reputation as good corporate citizens and to dislodge us from our assets abroad.
I want to emphasize that the Canadian mining industry is not afraid of scrutiny when it comes to being held to account for the way in which we operate at home and abroad, but we are concerned by this bill because it will damage us even as we operate at the highest global standards of corporate social responsibility. Each of the companies presenting today is fully committed to operating in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, to protecting human rights, and to making a positive difference in the communities in which we operate. As Mac said, we support the objectives of this bill, and we take seriously the demands and the complexities of corporate social responsibility. We expect to be and are held accountable. What we do not expect is to be subject to legislation that harms us, irrespective of how we conduct ourselves.
Thank you very much for listening to our submissions today.