A few years ago I was in Yemen. One of the major companies in Yemen was a Calgary oil company. I think they are called Nexen. Anyway, I was very surprised and proud of the job they were doing with the government. They were doing everything. They were not only going there and getting oil. They were the number one producer of oil in Yemen, but they were helping schools, schools for girls, they were helping everything, promoting seat belts. It was amazing at how good a job they were doing at being a corporate citizen and helping that country move along, and even helping the government, because you know what Yemen's like. Its a pretty rough and tumble country for them to be in there doing that job and also having a corporate responsibility.
I left with the impression that it's pretty cool that we have a Canadian company going in there, not simply taking resources out but also leaving quite a bit in the treasury there, as well as having a major corporate responsibility and taking the lead, more so than I think they had to do. I think it was very good they were doing that.
It concerns me when I see these reports. There's a report here that came out in 2009; I think it's from the Canadian Centre for the Study of Resource Conflict. I guess it was a leaked draft report. In this draft it stated that of most violations by Canadian mining and exploration companies, 60% had to do with poor community relations.
I don't know if you are familiar with this report. That's not good. Why can't these mining companies be more...? You know, they are sometimes carrying the first Canadian flag into these countries. You would hope they would be doing a better job than the Australians, the Europeans. You would hope it would be said “The Canadians are here, they have the best record, they do the job right. They work with the governments on making lives better for the people.” We don't want to be compared to maybe the way the Chinese are dealing in Africa and we're doing a little better. I think we should be the best, and we should all be proud when we go into these countries as a foreign affairs committee knowing that Canadian companies are doing their best.
You're putting on a good defence here, but what more can we do to get that standard up and be the best corporate citizens, best corporate mining citizens in the world, to beat the Australians, to beat the Europeans in that corporate responsibility? Should we have more protocols? Should CIDA be involved with you people going in and helping you understand what's happening in these countries? I mean, should we have a different Canadian approach?
I would prefer that we don't have rules and regulations that are going to force companies to do something all the time. You would sooner have this understanding that this is the way we act when we're in these countries. This is how we treat the people, we treat the land, we are going to be better than anybody at the end of the day. So what can we do to improve that image and have a country that would say “Great! Canadians will be coming here to do the job, not the Aussies or somebody else. Canadians are coming.” You know, similar to World War II, when the Canadians were coming everybody liked to see that flag. We would hope that these countries would think the same when Canadian mining companies are coming.