First of all, actions speak louder than words, as you have alluded. There are all these CSR guidelines and all the companies say that they ascribe to international best practices and so on.
If that is true, then why would they oppose this independent Bill C-300 to simply affirm that this is so? Obviously, to the extent that a company or a government member is opposing this very prudent, reasonable, modest piece of legislation, it simply indicates their lack of confidence that this is indeed the case, that companies are indeed being honest and forthright about their compliance with CSR standards. If they felt there was no problem, then Bill C-300 would almost be irrelevant to them.
There are many of these, and the proof is in the pudding, as they say down in the south of the U.S. It's the extent to which the government provides oversight. As I said, Canada and the United States are both OECD members. They both signed on to the OECD guidelines, yet the atrocities continue. Porgera and Papua New Guinea and Pacific Rim never would have occurred had the governments really been truly doing their jobs and providing oversight.
Bill C-300, in my book, is excellent. It's far superior to the current OPIC guidelines being developed in the United States, for three particular reasons. One is that Bill C-300 applies universally, as we mentioned before, to all extractive industry companies, whether they have government support or not, and not just on a project-specific basis. That's a positive. That's a good idea.
Second, Bill C-300 requires an investigation and mandatory sanctions for non-compliance, such as withholding credit or insurance or whatever the government role in the company is, and embassy support, as we heard there, and loss of support by Export Development Canada. That is a very good idea.
Third, Bill C-300 requires the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and International Trade independently to develop and enforce these standards and to apply these standards, and it requires that they conduct an investigation for non-frivolous complaints. It's a very simple, straightforward mechanism of governance and jurisprudence, I think.
It would really shift the dynamic, and those companies that are behaving well overseas will appreciate that those that aren't and that are cutting costs and have “an advantage” right now by doing that will no longer have that advantage. So those companies that are -behaving well are going to have a competitive advantage through this.