You raise a very important point. I think that the standards for corporate social responsibility have been rising over the last numbers of years, as they should.
It is our experience that Canadian-based companies are in fact stepping up. When I've visited some of these countries, it is their nationals who are talking about how the Canadian corporation was setting the example for their own national companies to meet.
What can we do? I think the important question is, what can we do to continue to raise the standard, and what can we do make sure that the right things are being done?
I believe the current government has recently made some announcements that are very important.
It's not the larger companies, but generally the smaller and less experienced companies, who can go into a country thinking they're doing the right thing and find themselves in a situation they probably didn't intend to happen, but that clearly needs to be resolved.
We need to do more training within the foreign governments themselves to help them set the right standards place, because companies will adhere to the law, but in many of these countries, they have no standards in place to be met. If we help those countries put in place the right kind of guidelines, and also put training in place for our foreign trade commissioners, then when these companies come to that country, the commissioners can sit down and talk to them right from day one and say, “Do you know that in this country these are the circumstances you need to be aware of and that you need to plan for? And if you put the right framework in place from the beginning, you will be in a position where you won't get yourself into trouble.”
So it's largely about education. It's about working with foreign governments to help them raise their standards, and it's about making sure that we have the resources in place in our department of international trade so that we can work with these companies.