Thank you very much, and good morning.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee on the future of mining in Canada. My name is Ken Neumann, and I am the Canadian national director for the United Steelworkers union.
The steelworkers represent 225,000 members in every region of this country. We are Canada's most diverse union, representing workers in every sector of the economy. Steelworkers work in Canada’s manufacturing, service, mining, energy, nuclear, telecommunications, health care, and education sectors. In particular, we represent 24,000 workers in resource extraction. The steelworkers make up the largest union in Canadian mining.
The value of the minerals extracted from Canada remains relatively strong, but the industry is cyclical and market sensitive. In 2015, Canada's exports were valued at $525 billion, $231 billion of which were natural resource exports. In 2014, the total value of publicly traded Canadian mining companies was $578 billion. Of these assets, $236 billion was located overseas in 124 countries.
As Canada’s mining union, our goals for the future centre on how mining can benefit workers and communities with safe, sustainable employment for Canadian citizens.
In recent years, foreign takeovers have increased the share of Canadian mine profits going to foreign-controlled corporations. However, these foreign owners have also closed mines when profits do not meet their expectations, leaving communities devastated. A recent example of corporate abandonment is Wabush Mines in Labrador, owned by U.S.-based Cliffs Natural Resources. Before it closed, Wabush Mines was Canada's third-largest iron ore operation, with an annual capacity of six million tonnes. Today, with the loss of hundreds of jobs, the town is full of empty homes and businesses.
Public policy could make mining activity and profits more beneficial to working people. Measures to encourage domestic processing of minerals could help create jobs. Fairer royalties could provide revenue for needed public services and infrastructure. A stronger Investment Canada Act could ensure that only takeovers providing a genuine net benefit to Canadian workers are approved.
We believe that responsible mining is possible. We know that mining can be undertaken in a way that respects people, including indigenous people, and minimizes the impact on the environment. However, this cannot happen by giving mining companies a carte blanche green light to exploit resources at breakneck speed and at any cost. It cannot happen when the federal government allows companies to bring in temporary foreign workers to work in mines, as happened in 2012 at HD Mining in northern British Columbia.
This practice has to stop. There must be a commitment, through government-led sectoral councils, to train Canadian workers, including those who have long been shut out of mining jobs—women and aboriginal people. Such an approach has worked well in the past, with equal representation of both unions and employers in partnership with government to create a perpetual training and jobs regime in our own country.
The future of mining in Canada demands a comprehensive industrial framework that promotes beneficial integration with other sectors of the economy. We believe that such integration must be part of a broader industrial and trade policy that is aimed at building value-adding and productivity-enhancing manufacturing production in Canada.
A modern economy must be more than just shipping resources offshore, only to buy them back at a premium as manufactured goods. Responsible mining in the 21st century means respecting the rights of indigenous people, and their right to free, prior, and informed consent before a mining project is undertaken.
Furthermore, we do not believe that every mine envisioned by geologists and engineers meets the test for economic, social, safety, and environmental acceptability. Not every mine promoted by wealth-seeking financiers should be built.
The worst example of irresponsible mining in Canada happened in the last century, but not so long ago that any of us has forgotten it. At the time, the Conservative federal government in the 1990s assisted a notorious mining promoter, Clifford Frame, to open the Westray Coal Mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Within months of the first shift entering the mine, an explosion caused by deliberately dangerous management practices killed all 26 miners who were working underground on May 9, 1992. The mine is long gone, but the legacy is a law that our members have fought to enact that holds companies criminally accountable for killing and maiming workers.
Our campaign to better enforce these amendments to the Criminal Code is ongoing. Workers in mines as well as other workplaces are still being killed at a rate of approximately 1,000 per year.
Responsible mining by Canadian companies operating outside Canada can also be improved by direct government policy decisions. Canadian mining companies have been implicated in numerous cases of human rights abuse, labour abuse, and disregard for the environment in their overseas operations. Our union believes that the Canadian government can do more than it has to close the international accountability gap.
Along with like-minded unions and NGOs, we strongly urge the government to create a human rights ombudsperson for the international extractive sector. That ombudsperson—not a counsellor—would be independent and impartial and empowered to investigate, report publicly, and make recommendations to companies and to the government.
As well, the government can and must facilitate the access to Canadian courts for people who have been harmed by international operations of Canadian companies. These measures would go a long way toward repairing Canada's reputation in many countries and ensuring true corporate accountability.
The future of mining in Canada and beyond our borders is bright. The value of extractive minerals may be cyclical, but they will always be necessary to our economy and the world we have now built and must maintain. However, modern mining absolutely must be socially and environmentally responsible, accountable, sustainable, and guided by good public policy.
I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you.