Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I regard such accusations of all members as being irresponsible and personally take umbrage at those. This denies the good work that the companies do, as has been pointed out by our witness here, in many cases, and I think you can make examples of good work that is being done.
And you deny what our government has been doing, starting with the work of this committee back in 2006 with a report, extensive consultations across the country, and the creation of a CSR counsellor, all of which are designed to address the issues that are before us.
Now, as our witness has pointed out here, there are options available here to do the responsible thing in complicated issues, and those include the Equator Principles, which are there, the UN guidelines on CSR, and a newly put in place CSR counsellor, all of which we hope will help improve the situation.
In your remarks, sir, you said there are options. You talked about the potential for doing serious damage with allegations. Charges under this bill could be brought by anyone who is not even directly involved in the conflict. They may not even be from the country in question and could bring charges.
While they're being investigated.... Now, I notice the witnesses before us earlier were not legal experts, although they have expertise in other areas. The witness at the back of the room has expertise in hydrology, and he worked for an NGO on water issues and now on this issue, but I don't see that he portrayed himself as a legal expert.
We've had legal experts here saying that allegations could very seriously impair Canada's image and the ability of our companies to work in the world...just by bringing forth allegations. We have serious concerns—I certainly do—about industrial warfare, about spurious allegations coming from a competitor who may want to take advantage of a company that's held up by our investigations.
Could you enlighten us or expound on those concerns?