Certainly Eritrea's human rights record is not a surprise. If you google “Eritrea human rights”, you'll get a whole list of different things. So for him to say that he was not aware of human rights concerns in Eritrea generally, I don't accept that, unless he just doesn't want to know.
In terms of whether, on his mine site, there are human rights violations, he says no. I say he doesn't know. They've openly said that even though they put these procedures in place, they aren't allowed to visit the camp where these allegations were made. I would say that's a pretty significant gap.
Given that Canadian companies are now involved in Eritrea—Nevsun and Sunridge Gold, with a possibility of more—and given that the Eritrean government operates a consulate here where they collect a tax from the Eritrean Canadian citizens, which provides them a financial lifeline, I think the Government of Canada does have some leverage to engage with Eritrea and to push for an improvement of the human rights situation there.
Canada generously admits many Eritreans to Canada as refugees and many of those Eritreans are fleeing the very program that a Canadian company is profiting from. That causes me great concern.