Canada has a reputation for being very forward thinking and our companies for doing very well with corporate social responsibility; it's not an issue of being Canadian or of having a golden heart but of economic survival. Companies are finding a competitive advantage in dealing with communities in a more transparent way up front rather than having to deal with problems later on. Companies are finding it an advantage in learning about new markets.
We had a discussion with one mining company, which shall remain nameless, about sharing information with Spain. The Spanish have consistently come to me when I've been in Madrid and have said that Canada does CSR really well. They ask why Spain doesn't set up a joint CSR program and do more work on CSR. They say they want to learn from Canadians, given our reputation on CSR.
But in talking with some Canadian companies, their response is that it's the last thing they want to do. They say that we have a competitive advantage here, that we do this better than anyone else, and that we're recognized for this. Spain has an advantage in culture and in language, they say, while our competitive advantage is based on CSR. This is not an opinion. This is hard analysis by guys who are concerned only about the next quarter. They see a competitive advantage in this and the Spanish see it too.
Also, hemispherically, we have a reputation for doing this. This doesn't mean that every Canadian company is doing this. There are some neanderthals that just don't get it, but in a couple of years I think we're going to see fewer and fewer of these companies. The market simply won't let them survive. You either get it and the new way of doing business or you don't.
We've also seen very quickly in the mining sector that the majors have begun imposing CSR requirements on the prospectors and the juniors. They have started to discount the claims they're buying from the juniors if the juniors haven't put into practice good community engagement. They're saying, look, we're going to be paying this claim that's worth maybe $100 million, but we're going to be spending $20 or $30 million dealing with protests, shutdowns, and problems with the government, so either you get it right from the beginning or we'll provide you with resources, prospectors, and developers who are doing a great job in developing frameworks for the juniors.
We're seeing this throughout the Canadian mining sector and Canadian private sector. Again, it's not out of the goodness of their hearts, but from a competitive advantage. When we're competing against countries like Spain who have advantages over us in culture and language, we have to be more efficient, we have to do a better job, and we have to find competitive advantage where we can. One place we have found it is in community engagement, social investment, and CSR.