Bill to Improve Standards for Canadian Mining Industry Fails, Largely Due to Liberal Opposition and No-Shows

The corporate clout of the mining industry trumped political ideology in Canada when members of all political parties helped to narrowly defeat a bill late last month that would have imposed standards on Canadian mining companies operating in developing countries.

"We had an opportunity and we blew it," said the bill's architect, John McKay. He faced 13 no-shows from colleagues in his own party, the Liberals, the largest of the opposition parties in the House of Commons. In the end, the Oct. 27 vote resulted in 140 against to 134 in favour.

"Both domestically and internationally, there is a huge amount of disappointment in the Parliament of Canada," McKay told Canadian reporters.

The opposition from the ruling free market-oriented Conservative minority government was not surprising. What caught the eye of some observers was the number of centrist and centre-left politicians -- a total of 22 -- who stayed away from the vote or voted against the bill.

Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the centrist Liberals, the largest of the opposition parties, did not show up for the vote. While he failed to explain his decision publicly, another senior Liberal MP, Martha Hall Findlay, complained about the lack of a financial mechanism to back up the mining reform bill. "C-300 was seriously flawed," she told the Ottawa-based Embassy Magazine.

At the heart of C300 was a provision that government assistance would be withdrawn from Canadian companies that failed to adhere to certain standards of behaviour.

Canadians are involved in three-quarters of the mining operations outside Canada, according to the Toronto-based Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC).

Canadian companies make up a third of the 171 mining and exploration companies where there have been reports of conflicts with local communities in developing countries, environmental degradation and unethical behaviour, stated a fall 2009 independent report commissioned by the PDAC and leaked to the media.

Community conflict included "significant negative cultural and economic disruption to a host community, as well as significant protests and physical violence," the report said.

Typically, "the hot spots" where Canadian companies figure prominently involve gold, copper and coal operations in countries such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Latin America provided the largest number of complaints in terms of region.

"You can literally do a world tour on issues involving Canadian mining companies which do not reflect well not only on the industry but what I worry about as much as anything, our own country [Canada]," McKay told IPS.

However, Dennis Jones, chair of corporate responsibility panel for PDAC, downplayed the leaked report.

"We recognise that we need to improve [corporate social responsibility] performance in the industry and that is what we are trying to. What we don't agree with the NGOs is the extent to which Canadian mining companies are involved, in these incidents," he said.

Jones also told IPS that the bill's provisions, in which foreign complaints would be lodged in Ottawa during a time-consuming quasi-judicial process, would be detrimental to the reputation of both the firm targeted and the Canadian industry as a whole.

But Catherine Coumans, research coordinator with Mining Watch Canada, countered that the Canadian mining industry is already receiving a black eye from a number of lawsuits launched against individual corporate players.

"What people need to understand is that this bill was not just about corporate accountability, it was about government accountability. It was about making sure that the Canadian government is not shoveling tax dollars to mining companies that are facing serious allegations of human rights and environmental abuses without being able to assure accountability and transparency about these operations to Canadian taxpayers," she told IPS.