Mr. Speaker, I compliment my colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood for coming up with an excellent and much needed bill that more than 90% of Canadians would support if they were sitting here in the House.
The bill is needed because we are an exporting nation. We go abroad and work in some of the toughest, most difficult and impoverished countries in the world. Canadian companies can and should be leaders in corporate social responsibility, which is what my colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood is trying to do. We are trying to lead.
Why is there a need for this? In Sudan, oil is fuelling the conflict in Darfur and will fuel the catastrophe that is likely to come in the southern part of the country. We have seen the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since World War II. More than five million people have been killed and more than 1,000 people are dying day in and day out. This conflict has been fuelled with coltan, a substance that we have in our BlackBerries, cell phones and other electronic products, and by diamonds and gold. These products are being mined and taken out by private companies.
In Burma it is rubies and oil. In Nigeria, oil is fuelling a catastrophic problem in the delta in that country. When I was in Belize I tried to stop a Canadian company from Newfoundland that was poised to build a dam. It did build the dam which destroyed the largest central contiguous jungle and rainforest in Central America. A Canadian company did that, which is why the bill is needed and more so because we know it is the private sector that can help developing countries to become self-sufficient.
It is no thanks, of course, to our government which stripped CIDA from supporting eight African countries that need our help, including countries like Zambia, Malawi and Cameroon that are trying to get back on their feet, but what does the Canadian government do? It removes the funding and puts it into countries in South America and the Caribbean because that is were it wants to do business. It is a naked effort on the part of the government to forsake our humanitarian objectives for commercial objectives, not understanding that commercial objectives and humanitarian objectives go hand in hand. That is where the bill sits.
The bill would provide businesses with a framework to operate in these difficult countries, a framework that involves an obligation to account, report and adhere to the environmental standards that all Canadians want our companies to embrace. In doing so, they would lead and set an example, not only for other companies but for the recipient countries.
The biggest challenge developing countries have is not from the lack of aid they receive externally but from the predatory governments that are riven with corruption. They cannot provide the environment to enable them to have an economy that functions properly and a government that is unable to provide for the basic social needs of its people, including health care and education. They lack the capacity and that is where aid would come in.
However, there is also a role for the private sector. Through the bill, the private sector would benefit from better profit if it would treat the local populace well, the environment well and work to build capacity so that a developing country will be able to take care of itself.
One of the cruellest things we do is persist in the standard myths that we have today that more money is the answer. We need to build capacity in developing countries. We need to invest wisely. We need to enable and obligate domestic governments to operate in a way that is not predatory and not riven with corruption. The private sector has an important and effective role in this.
Talisman is one Canadian company that has done a very good job in providing a framework for corporate social responsibility for its own company. I am very impressed with its initiative and I have talked about it often because when Canadian companies do a good thing, as the Talisman did in this case, they should be applauded.
The Canadian government has a role. By working with the private sector, as my colleague is doing, we can provide the framework for the obligation to report.
When the European Union put forward the obligation for European countries to report what they spent in developing countries, the EU found that corrupt officials were far less likely to ask for money back. It caused a diminishment of the amount of money that was moving back and forth under the table, an act that is so corrosive to the ability of any country to remove the cancer and blight that is corruption.
It is an obligation of the Canadian government to move this forward. It is also an obligation for the government to set standards and to behave in a way that is responsible, congruent with good environmental principles, good social policy, good technical support and transparency in order to set an example for the private sector and for other countries.
We would like to see Canada branded as an international model for corporate social responsibility. We want to recognize companies as leaders in corporate social responsibility. We would also like to ensure that we disseminate best practices. This is very important, because whenever I have been in other parts of the world, I have seen the great hope and possibility. I have a particular interest and passion in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 50% of the world's natural resources sit in sub-Saharan Africa. Our extractive industries are there. Many of them are in war-ravaged places, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
We need to facilitate and encourage those companies to operate in a way that does not contribute to the disasters that exist in those parts of the world.
I have a proposal right now, through supporting the Heal Africa Hospital in Goma. Goma is the epicentre of the rape crisis. My proposal is to ask Canadian companies working in the extractive industries there to fund a $1 million infrastructure project to provide for the expansion of the only hospital there. Many of the people there have suffered horribly. In many of the villages, 70% of the women have been raped. Those women have suffered horrible injuries. This lone hospital, run by Dr. Joe Lusi and his wife Lyn, is the last and only opportunity for these people to be treated, so we are asking Canadians companies to help.
Companies, interestingly enough, would also benefit in their own way because their profits would increase. The health of the working population would improve and the companies' relationship with local areas would improve.
What is absent in the world today is a leader who recognizes the private sector as the best engine of growth within developing countries and provides the tax base and infrastructure that these countries need to be self-sufficient.
Aid is not the answer. It is a myth to suggest that it is. To use Nigeria as the example, it has generated some $230 billion from oil over the last decade. This far exceeds by orders of magnitude the amount of money Nigeria could possibly receive from aid. Yet people who go there see a country riven by poverty where the people are no better off than they were as far back as 10 years ago. Why is that so? Where has that money gone? That money was provided by private companies, big oil-producing companies. This bill would enable us to build the framework. In the case of Nigeria, that private money could be used transparently to build capacity and the judicial, political, economic, social and public sector framework that is the only hope of a country like Nigeria to become self-sufficient.
In closing, I want to thank my colleague for introducing the bill. All of us in the Liberal Party fully support it. Instead of trying to be obstructionist about it, the government should roll up its sleeves, get behind the bill and support it for the good of our country, for the good of our private sector and for the good of some of the most impoverished countries in the world.
