Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Sept. 28th, 2017

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

If a group, for example, decided they didn't want a project and they were protesting on the edge of a private property, or whatever, would you call that a “known conflict”, if the company was pushing through to get to their property? Would that be considered as a “1” in your data?

[Dr. Paul Haslam]

Yes, anything that involves sustained mobilization of people is counted as a conflict.

I should note that this is a common practice under the political event analysis methodology that we use for the counting. My main defence of it is that there is so little data out there. We use what's available, and these accounts by activist groups are what's available.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Do you divide them by the level of aggression involved in the conflict? Do you break that down in your data analysis?

[Dr. Paul Haslam]

We did include an indicator for severity of conflict, but we haven't actually done any work with it. We weren't convinced it was as accurate as the one that just indicates that there is some kind of social mobilization, so we've just been working with that one.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you, Dr. Haslam.

MP Anderson, your time is up, unfortunately.

We will now move to MP Tabbara, please.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you to the witnesses here today.

This is an important topic for us. In our last committee meeting, we heard of the mechanisms Canada has in place for companies that are found to be committing human rights violations. Can you tell us what remedies the victims of these companies receive?

[Dr. Paul Haslam]

I don't know what remedies the victims would receive.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

No, I meant, can you tell us, for some of the violations that may be happening, what does Canada...? If Canada does see a violation, what are some of the steps it takes to remedy this, within the office of CSR?

[Dr. Paul Haslam]

My understanding of what's called the enhanced CSR strategy, which was announced in June 2014, is that the CSR counsellor now has the right to investigate a company for allegations of malfeasance, specifically for violating certain CSR codes listed in the policy, and that the only punishment, as it were, is to not provide enhanced consular support services to that company.

The process is not really about providing redress for alleged victims; it's about, essentially, removing governmental support to companies that are found by the CSR counsellor's office to have violated certain codes of behaviour.

Since that policy has been in place for three years, I think it would be interesting.... I don't know the answer to this, but I'd like to know—and perhaps the committee would like to know—if any companies have, indeed, been sanctioned by the CSR counsellor, because that might give a bit of a window into the utility of that mechanism.

[Dr. Jeffery Webber]

My own view is that the CSR mechanism is not up to standard in holding Canadian companies accountable for their activities abroad, precisely because the maximum penalty is a displacement of diplomatic support. It's a voluntary schema. There ought to be criminal accountability for your activities outside of the Canadian state.

[Dr. Paul Haslam]

In theory, any violation of the law or human rights should be prosecutable in the states where they occur. One concern of activists is that in weak states, or in states that are keen on promoting Canadian mining, they're not going to take that step.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

That was going to be my next question. Within the states where there are Canadian companies, would you say that their legal systems, in stronger or weaker states, are capable of combatting the violations within these corporations? Maybe you can give an example of a stronger state versus a weaker state that you've seen in your studies.

[Dr. Paul Haslam]

Clearly, there are great variations in the ability of developing countries to uphold the rule of law. When we talk about Canadian companies in the developing world, remember that developing countries want them there. There may be conflicts with certain communities located near mines, but the governments want them there because the governments receive income and royalties. From an activist's perspective, the problem is that some governments may not be interested in upholding the law because they have a material interest in the presence of those companies.

[Dr. Jeffery Webber]

Guatemala, where there is significant investment, is one case. The ability of the Guatemalan state to carry out proper adjudication of these issues is highly questionable. In the literature, there's almost no contention over this issue. I would also bring to the committee's attention something relevant to the argument that Canadian firms are doing better than others in their performance. In Paul's testimony, the dataset is only based on five countries, which excludes, importantly, countries like Guatemala. According to The “Canada Brand” report, 27% of deaths associated with activities of Canadian mining companies occurred in Guatemala, so inclusion of that singular case would likely change the findings significantly.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

In connection with my studies, I went on a parliamentary mission to Africa—to Zimbabwe and Botswana, countries that neighbour each other. They talked about some of the Canadian mining companies. You could see that in Zimbabwe a lot of the development did not go back to the people, whereas in Botswana it did. They had an acronym, DDI, Diamond Development Initiative. It really went back to institutions such as education and health care.

Do we see some of that in Latin America?

[Dr. Paul Haslam]

I think the problem with social conflict and human rights is a lot about the absence of the state. Where the state is not present to redirect benefits received from mining companies, locals typically see few if any of these benefits.

Incidentally, because my colleague mentioned my research, those five countries are the largest in the region. They constitute 85% of the mining cases. I don't think it would change the results, but I am sensitive to the notion that the Guatemalan case represents a particularly low level of governance, which is problematic for human rights.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you.

MP Hardcastle.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wish we had a session for each of you. I think it's unfortunate that we have to split this because we really need to escalate the calibre of the discussion that we're having, especially the role we play here at the subcommittee. I'm very proud and very grateful that my colleagues on the subcommittee want to at least take a stab at tackling this.

Dr. Webber, I think one of the important things that we should be hearing about a little more here at our committee is, if you could elaborate on the types of support and contributions that you talked about that the Government of Canada has provided on behalf of Canadian mining companies, as you described as striking. Also Dr. Haslam described removing those supports as the only recourse that exists right now in any type of follow-through on human rights redresses.

[Dr. Jeffery Webber]

In our book we document in particular the role that you can find in embassy communiqués about what Canadian embassies spend most of their time doing in countries in Latin America with large mining industries. That is doing the groundwork and promotion and facilitation of Canadian mining investment, which as I've documented has led to extraordinary extraction of value, rather than input into the communities on the ground. Therefore, there would have to be a radical reorientation of the commitments of embassies, and obviously the commitment of Ottawa, in the promotion of Canadian mining corporations' profitability over and above the record of human rights, sociological degradation, and so on. I think that has to be the priority, and not the return of profitability. That's the key question for me.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Could you give us some examples of what you've learned has happened when there is some type of a conflict in a potential Canadian mining project and Canadian state-supported involvement?

[Dr. Jeffery Webber]

There were no expectations of conflict in areas such as Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, and elsewhere prior to upticks in investment. Then the role of the Canadian government from the 1990s has been to promote the investment regardless of the expectation. The idea has been to contain opposition, to discredit opposition, to make them appear to be minoritarian elements driven by outside agitators, and so on, even when there have been community-organized popular referendums in several Guatemalan cases, which have rejected the presence of Canadian mining corporations. I think respecting the expression of popular will from the grassroots, not just Latin American governments, which aren't always representative of the Latin American populations, is a key that the Canadian government and its representatives abroad ought to keep squarely in mind.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Your time didn't allow you to complete your presentation. I wonder if you want to take this opportunity right now to finish up.

[Dr. Jeffery Webber]

Sure. Thank you for that opportunity.

Apart from disagreeing with the methodology of the Haslam et al. study on Canadian firms being better, nonetheless there is a crucial element of distortion in the Mining Association of Canada's representation of that study. It selectively uses that one piece of evidence, but discounts the crucial fact that the Haslam et al. study agrees that there are extraordinary levels of conflict involving Canadian mining companies. The debate is around proportionality, but not around the ethical and moral imperative to deal with them. I think it's a misrepresentation of a crucial component of that study with which I agree, even though I don't agree with part of the analysis. I think it's important to put that on the record and to bring to light the use of that data in a misleading interpretation by the Mining Association of Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to MP Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I have one question, then I'll turn it over to Mr. Sweet so we can all participate here today.

In 2009, as you know, the office of the CSR counsellor was established. What motivated this on the part of the Conservative government of the day? Where did it stem from? Was it a genuine interest in dealing with some of the concerns that had been raised about mining companies? Was it a PR effort to basically say the government is acting and the government is interested but, in effect, not really interested? What do you make of this decision?