Government Squanders Opportunity to Hold Extractive Companies to Account
(Ottawa- March 26, 2009) Today’s government announcement on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has squandered the important consensus reached by industry and civil society organizations on how to ensure that the overseas operations of Canadian extractive companies adhere to international environmental and human rights standards. Almost two years ago, the multi-stakeholder Advisory Group to the National Roundtables on CSR in the Extractive Sector submitted its consensus report to the Canadian government. Today’s long-awaited response ignores the report’s central recommendations.

We need your help to make Export Development Canada (EDC) more transparent!!

CALL TO ACTION

EDC continues to withhold key environmental information about the projects it supports, citing reasons of commercial confidentiality. When it does disclose information prior to supporting a project, this can be from one day to two weeks prior to signing the cheque.

ACT NOW TO HELP SAVE ROSIA MONTANA!

 

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The Globe and Mail - Report on Business

The Kindness of Corporations

From the World Economic Forum to undergrad business courses, corporate social responsibility is now a priority. There are just two problems. CSR can be disingenuous. And it’s dangerous

KONRAD YAKABUSKI

June 27, 2008

April 25, 2008

Mr. Eric Siegel
President and Chief Executive Officer
EDC
151 O’Connor St.
Ottawa, ON
K1A 1K3

Dear Mr. Siegel:

On March 20, the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo publicly released the report of the Mining Contract Review Commission. The Commission is an inter-ministerial body mandated to review numerous contracts that were awarded to mining companies between 1996 and 2005 in the DRC. The Commission confirms that many of the contracts are highly irregular and that their terms are extremely unjust. The government body recommends that a significant number of these agreements be annulled and in some cases, renegotiated.

Government’s Response to Mining Report Still Underground

By Michelle Collins, Embassy Newspaper

It has been just over a year since a highly anticipated report recommending significant steps to ensure Canadian mining companies operating abroad adhere to socially responsible standards was submitted to the government.

Yet despite indications from Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the G8 leaders’ summit last June that Canada—which has the world’s largest number of extractive companies—was poised to take the lead, nothing more has emerged, and observers and critics say they have no idea what to expect, or when.

March 28, 2008

The Honourable James Flaherty
Minister of Finance
House of Commons
Wellington St.
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0A6

Dear Minister Flaherty:

I am writing with respect to the 2007 OECD Revised Council Recommendation on Common Approaches on the Environment and Officially Supported Export Credits. The Recommendation currently lacks a credible mechanism to monitor Member implementation and I write to urge Canada to support the adoption of a peer review system. I understand that the Secretariat of the OECD Export Credit Group (ECG) intends to include the issue of peer review for the Common Approaches in the agenda of the upcoming ECG meeting in April 2008. A peer review system is essential to generate credible information for use in the 2010 report to the OECD Council on the implementation of the Recommendation.