Good evening, everyone.
Thank you very much for the invitation to be here and for your interest in studying this vital issue.
I coordinate the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability, the CNCA. We were formed in 2005. We bring together 39 organizations from diverse sectors across Canada, which collectively represent the voices of millions of Canadians from coast to coast.
We are calling for urgent action by the Government of Canada to address human rights and environmental abuses by Canadian companies operating overseas.
Our network was vital to the government's creation of the Canadian ombudsperson for responsible enterprise. In 2016, we published model legislation that was based on years of engagement with impacted communities and extensive research, and vetted by subject matter experts.
We engaged in good faith with the Government of Canada to help build a best-in-class model based on specific commitments critical to the future of the office's credibility. We stood with Minister Champagne when he made the announcement of the CORE in 2018.
It is telling that today Canadian civil society, human rights organizations and labour unions are not standing up in support of this version of the CORE. To the contrary, we have had to issue warnings to impacted communities to approach this office with caution, if at all. We should be singing this office's praises, and there's a reason that we're not.
For years, hundreds of thousands of Canadians, organizations from diverse sectors and multiple United Nations bodies have called on Canada to implement effective mechanisms to prevent and remedy Canadian corporate human rights abuses overseas. The kinds of abuses we're talking about include threats, killings, bodily harm, gang rape, unsafe and exploitative working conditions, forced labour, failure to respect the rights of indigenous peoples and women, and serious environmental damage.
Instead of implementing effective mechanisms, Canada has relied on voluntary approaches, providing advice to companies about the expectation that they respect human rights, and sometimes offering mediation and mediation approaches, like joint fact-finding.
The experience with Canada's toothless mechanisms—the CSR counsellor's office from 2009 and Canada's national contact point for the OECD guidelines since 2000—demonstrates that this approach has not worked. When the CSR counsellor's office was closed in 2018, it had not resolved a single case. Canada's NCP, which is still in operation today, has also failed to investigate, prevent or remedy harm by Canadian companies operating overseas.
When it comes to effectiveness, the version of the CORE that we see today is not materially different from these failed offices. Without independent investigatory powers, the CORE will be equally unfit for purpose. Investigatory powers are the foundation of an effective ombudsperson's office, upon which the rest of the office's functions depend. Key information that's crucial to investigations is often held exclusively by companies, and it will not be offered voluntarily.
I would like to put clearly on the committee record that what I'm suggesting here is not a new ask, not a request to reform the CORE right before it opens its doors; it's a request to give effect to what the Government of Canada explicitly and publicly committed to in 2018.
From the Government of Canada website at the time of that announcement, I quote: “The Government [of Canada] is committed to ensuring that the Ombudsperson has all the tools required to ensure compliance with information requests—including the compelling of witnesses and documents”.
It's also a request to give the CORE the absolute minimum powers needed to do its job: the power to compel documents and testimony. These are powers that the Government of Canada's own external legal review, the McIsaac report, which was commissioned by Minister Carr in the spring of 2019—which I hope to table for this committee—confirms are needed and are within the federal government's authority to mandate. That report concludes that the federal government can provide the CORE with these powers and the office's effectiveness would be compromised without them.
It is urgent that communities and workers impacted by Canadian companies operating overseas have access to effective grievance mechanisms in Canada, particularly as there is often nowhere else for them to seek redress for harm.
We hope and expect that the current study at the subcommittee will lead Canada to fulfill its commitments, honour Canada's international human rights obligations, and empower the CORE to independently investigate.
I look forward to the opportunity to answer your questions and provide further information now.