Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 5th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you, Mr. Gratton.

We have a couple of minutes left, and we're going to move to MP Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My concerns about this go back almost 12 years. We've been seized with this at the committee on three separate occasions, I think. I was seized with it at the industry committee twice. There were private members' bills in the past. I'm certain you're familiar with those. I sympathize with the people on the ground who feel victimized. I sympathize with the Mining Association. It appears to me, from your testimony and all that I've heard, that you're trying to do the best you can to have your members participate in this sustainable mining program so the reputation is upheld and people understand that Canadian mines are doing all they can to make sure that not only are they socially responsible but also environmentally responsible. They're doing the best they can to contribute to the communities they're investing in, while at the same time, making a profit and making sure that the countries at large benefit from that resource extraction as well.

There's another player now, the United Nations. We had Mr. Pesce as a witness. He mentioned that he noticed Canadian companies referenced the international social, economic, and environmental standards, but he said they weren't sufficiently implemented. He said, “Our finding is that you should push your standards up to put more emphasis on implementation and monitoring effective implementation.”

Would you agree that some work still needs to be done as far as implementing and measuring the responsibility on the ground are concerned? He didn't mention TSM so I don't know if he was talking about that. He did mention interviews that he had back in June in Canada, I believe.

[Pierre Gratton]

Yes, I listened to his testimony as well. He wasn't actually here, and we spent all of maybe an hour with the two representatives who did come, so I don't know the extent to which they understood TSM or undertook an examination of what industry is doing.

I will certainly acknowledge that this is a work in progress for many companies. Was Goldcorp, I think, not the first to do a human rights impact assessment? That was a few years ago. The voluntary principles on security and human rights were started by Madeleine Albright, but it really only started to achieve the kind of prominence it has in the last five or six years. This is a work in progress, but I certainly see across our membership more and more building of due diligence and taking the protection of human rights, the training of employees and security personnel in human rights, advancing that every day, and making progress in those areas.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you. I think we've run out of time.

I didn't get a chance to look. I was listening to your testimony, which is why I didn't look through it. Do you have an executive summary of the TSM so we can see the broader scope of it and the benchmarks you have for the companies? Could you table that with the committee so we could see exactly what the framework of it is?

[Ben Chalmers]

Yes, we definitely can. It's very focused on doing exactly what the gentleman from the UN talked about in terms of demonstrating implementation, so it's reporting and verification. The voluntary principles commitment that we made also includes reporting, so we're very focused on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you. There are a couple of documents being tabled.

I'm going to take another minute and a half here. There's been an issue that's come up a number of times, and I think it would be helpful for our study to get some information from you. It's come up in our studies on Berta Cáceres and other situations that have occurred in Latin American mining conflict, and it's the role of private security. I see that MAC member companies have undertaken as part of the voluntary principles certain codes of conduct, and they're going to be reporting back.

Can you tell us how the issues related to private security are being handled, and what you see is going to be happening in terms of this reporting mechanism that seems will be starting next year, in your 2018 progress report? This is something that's come up repeatedly for us.

[Ben Chalmers]

The voluntary principles set out guidelines and principles around how companies should work with both public and private security. They talk about training. They talk about engagement with communities around these things and a number of other factors. The implementation of these principles is really intended to drive performance improvement around how we work with security forces where they are used.

For our part, the commitment requires our companies to implement security management systems consistent with the voluntary principles. Starting next year, the companies that are using security forces will start to report through us, through our TSM annual report, describing their approach to implementation and describing their approach to assurance, that the principles are being used appropriately. That will be included publicly in our annual report.

The other thing we've also done is to create a communities of practice of security practitioners within the industry to facilitate knowledge transfer, sharing of best practices, and discussions of how issues are dealt with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much to all three of you.

With that, we're running a few minutes over.

MP Hardcastle.

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

Mr. Chair, I will also table a document that references the international human rights authority that I referred to, when I quoted them in my question. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

With that, we shall adjourn.