International Trade committee  I'll start with the court cases question. What I really wanted to emphasize by mentioning these court cases is how few cases have been brought, given that those cases that have been brought are the tip of the iceberg of the actual harm. Since 1997, we've only had eight court ca

International Trade committee  I'll just add one thing to what was just said. In this mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence that we've been talking about, one of the requirements would be that companies would report on how they are treating indigenous peoples in their global operations. UNDRI

International Trade committee  Okay. Great. This aspect is really important, because we heard earlier that Canadian mining companies could possibly have a competitive disadvantage if they were held to a higher standard by Canada. Mr. Thomson very clearly said, in fact, that they would have a better chance of

International Trade committee  Yes, certainly, that's what we would hope and that's what we would wish for. I've heard mining companies respond to this kind of question by saying, “Well, we just follow the laws of the country where we operate, and if we don't have to do these things, then we don't have to do

International Trade committee  I'm afraid I'm not entirely clear on what the mechanisms are that you're talking about. Are you talking about the ISDS cases?

International Trade committee  I'm not aware it even met in November of last year. I don't know that it met at all after civil society and the unions left. I know they were trying to reconstitute it. I'm not sure if that actually happened and I have no idea what it's doing, if anything.

International Trade committee  We were following Kinross. As you mentioned, Kinross actually left Russia. It took a while, but it did leave. That was the main company we were following. We're also concerned about where the products of mines that are owned by oligarchs end up. There is a private company called

International Trade committee  I named an awful lot of issues and I named a lot of countries. All of those issues that I named and all of those countries that I named are cases that we work on, and have worked on, in MiningWatch for over 23 years. I will be detailing some of those in a brief that we will provi

International Trade committee  Actually, no. One of these companies also has or had an operation in Canada and also one in the U.S., if I'm not mistaken. This company is also operating in other jurisdictions.

International Trade committee  The process of the CORE, while she's investigating cases, is rather oblique, so I don't really know where this is going or how that's going to be investigated, but it is now her obligation, as I think she has taken these cases. She's going to have to investigate, somehow, whether

International Trade committee  It's the same, actually. We were also consulted and we also strongly urged them to set out some standards and ask companies to voluntarily comply with those standards.

International Trade committee  That's a very good question. Canada is very rich in minerals, and we do have many of the resources here. I don't know. I wish you could have asked that question of our exploration PDAC friends, but they've left. I don't know why they go abroad, but what companies will tell you

International Trade committee  There are various definitions, but the most basic one is a company that is headquartered in Canada.

International Trade committee  That's a really important question. It goes to the core of what we're talking about today. Right now, Canada cannot enforce the laws and rules that we have for mining in Canada. We can't extend those laws and rules to mining overseas. What we can do is require any Canadian compa

International Trade committee  Up until now, no. She's been operating for five years. She has not completed any cases yet. We know that there are at least two cases in front of her. These are cases of two Canadian mining companies that are operating in China in the Uighur territory. The concern is that they ar