Mr. Speaker, it is the Kimberley process that was referenced. It is to make sure that it is still functioning to follow the supply chain. There are some issues there. However, the member brings up a very important point.
I was just at an event a week ago on the issue of certifying and following the supply chain for gold as well as for conflict minerals. There is a role for Canadian mining companies. It has happened in the past that mining companies hire security firms to essentially keep people off the land and sometimes to push people off the land. Some very unsavoury methods have been used to do that, not directly by the mining companies but by subcontractors.
What Canada needs to do, following the transparency initiatives we have seen at the G8 and G7 and the OECD, is ensure that all companies understand that they have a role to play in compliance and in ensuring, from taking minerals or gold out of the ground all the way through to production, that if any human rights abuses happen in connection to that, they have to bear the responsibility. There has been some good work done on this. Obviously government has to play a role, and I think we need to strengthen oversight. We have had debates in this House on how we can do that.
When we talk about big mining sites, there are cases when subcontracting has happened and human rights abuses have happened. It is not typical and is certainly not in conflict minerals, which is all about illegal mining. However, we need to understand that the responsibility lies with those companies to ensure that nothing like that happens. That is something we can do a bit more of.