Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I would suggest that the measure of complaints going to the current CSR counsellor has to be treated as anecdotal evidence for intensity of conflict. There is a lag time between serious scholarly investigation into rates of social conflict and violence and so on. The latest data

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It was the same question to which I've already provided an answer.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That counterfactual relies on an extraordinary transformation of Latin American events in which you could not hold possibly the conditions equal to answer that. It would be simply without foundation.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That would be an improvement on the present situation—

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  —but certainly not enough to justify what the—

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That wouldn't begin to change my mind, no.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  In our book we document in particular the role that you can find in embassy communiqués about what Canadian embassies spend most of their time doing in countries in Latin America with large mining industries. That is doing the groundwork and promotion and facilitation of Canadian

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There were no expectations of conflict in areas such as Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, and elsewhere prior to upticks in investment. Then the role of the Canadian government from the 1990s has been to promote the investment regardless of the expectation. The idea has been to cont

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Sure. Thank you for that opportunity. Apart from disagreeing with the methodology of the Haslam et al. study on Canadian firms being better, nonetheless there is a crucial element of distortion in the Mining Association of Canada's representation of that study. It selectively us

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Guatemala, where there is significant investment, is one case. The ability of the Guatemalan state to carry out proper adjudication of these issues is highly questionable. In the literature, there's almost no contention over this issue. I would also bring to the committee's atten

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  My own view is that the CSR mechanism is not up to standard in holding Canadian companies accountable for their activities abroad, precisely because the maximum penalty is a displacement of diplomatic support. It's a voluntary schema. There ought to be criminal accountability for

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Sure. There are no allegations in the Osgoode Hall Law School report of direct allegations involving a Canadian mining company being specifically responsible for the violence. The argument is a proximity of Mining Association of Canada activity with the various aspects of that re

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Natural resource development....This is....

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Well, it's not a simple yes-or-no question. There would be all kinds of questions to be asked in terms of developmental strategies, alternative components of extractive development, and so on. What I would say is that the role of Canadian mining companies in this area I would not

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That's true under the current context.