I think of the famous example of Eleanor Roosevelt travelling through Russia and being approached by a prisoner there who presumably would have faced retaliation for having spoken to her. Despite the fact that she was well-meaning, she had no capacity to help in that situation.
What about some of the remedies that exist through our securities rules? For a publicly traded Canadian company—a company that trades on the Canadian stock exchange—to issue new shares or float a bond issue, if it is working overseas in the mining sector, it has to meet certain performance standards. It has to, for example, ensure that it's achieving certain labour standards in conformity with the ILO rules. It has to make sure it conforms with certain environmental standards, such as the use of properly maintained tailing ponds and reforestation efforts appropriate to the environment in place in that area, and there are a number of other such standards.
These are enforced by Canadian professionals who have professional standards to live up to, and if they don't report accurately, they'll lose their professional accreditations, so they have a very strong interest in doing that. If those reports aren't filed with the securities commissions, then it's impossible to refinance that company, giving a very strong incentive to comply with the rules.
Does this model, in your opinion, have any merit, and could it be expanded to cover some of the other areas you're describing, such as indigenous land claim issues?