International Trade committee  These are stronger tools for companies to assert protection over their investments. The strongest tool they have is access to international arbitration tribunals. It costs, for both them and states, millions of dollars to have their disputes heard. Affected communities and public

International Trade committee  I believe that you're referring to Inmet Mining. Unfortunately, there are a lot of contradictions in that company's statement. Specifically, that company has a very strong public relations campaign that uses the concept of corporate social responsibility, but its actions demonstr

International Trade committee  I think the Canadian government would do better to focus on creating some strong regulations to provide more significant oversight of the overseas mining industry, rather than focusing on promoting these sorts of investment agreements, which do not have any significant mechanism

International Trade committee  I don't think whether this agreement is in existence or not is going to make a difference in whether or not there is Canadian mining in Panama.

International Trade committee  I believe I provided three examples. We have seen some significant improvements in terms of independent environmental oversight with regard to the Ekati diamond mine in the Northwest Territories. We have seen some significant advances in the nature of the impact benefit agreement

International Trade committee  I was not around when those things were happening. I do know that we have referred to those as examples in different spaces and in different conversations.

International Trade committee  They are ones that my colleagues refer to and have guided me to, yes.

International Trade committee  There are 24 different organizations. The list is available on our website. We could run through all of those. Eighty percent of our funding comes from a wide range of foundations, as well as from some of our member organizations.

International Trade committee  I believe the 20% is from our member organizations and about 80% from different foundations.

International Trade committee  No, they're not all Canadian foundations.

International Trade committee  No, I don't have that off the top of my head.

International Trade committee  I'm not sure. You can look at our annual report. It's very transparent in that regard.

International Trade committee  You can just go to our website. They're all posted there.

International Trade committee  Where Inmet is located is not within one of the designated administrative areas, which are known as comarcas in Panama. It is located in the area of a number of indigenous communities that are living effectively outside of one of these areas—here, we might say “off reserve”. They

International Trade committee  You might be referring to Cerro Colorado, which is located within the Ngöbe-Buglé comarca in western Panama, where a group of consultants have been working for a company called Corriente Resources. It's unclear if that's the company they've continued to work for, because it was b