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To the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development
On Bill C-300, an Act Respecting Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas in Developing Countries.

By Stephen Hunt
USW  District 3 Director


November 19, 2009

Good morning. And thank you for the invitation to speak to you today about this very important private member’s bill.

My name is Stephen Hunt. I am the elected leader of the United Steelworkers’ District 3. District 3 is our union’s largest geographical region, encompassing all of Western Canada and the Territories. It is also the area of Canada with the most natural resources, from mining to oil and gas to forestry. You may not know that the United Steelworkers is Canada’s most diverse union and represents thousands of workers in those sectors identified in Bill C-300.

Before I begin, I want to tell you where I come from. I joined the Steelworkers union as a very young man when I worked at the Utah open-pit copper mine in Port Hardy British Columbia in 1973. I also worked at Afton Mines near Kamloops, B.C.

I have been closely linked to the mining sector throughout my union life, in particular health and safety practices both in Canada and offshore, where the companies our members work for in Canada are employing workers in developing countries. I have worked with miners in Peru to develop strategies to prevent silicosis and I have worked with miners in Chile to get Canadian companies there to improve mine safety.

I am well acquainted with corporate accountability and was a witness at the inquiry into the 1992 explosion at the Westray mine in Nova Scotia, where terrible company practices led directly to the deaths of 26 miners, 11 of whose bodies have never been recovered. As you may be aware, the Westray inquiry and rank-and-file lobbying by Steelworker members ultimately led to changes in the Criminal Code to strengthen corporate accountability for workplace injury and death.

Now that you know who I am, it will come as no surprise to you that the United Steelworkers union supports Bill C-300. We support it not because we think resource extraction is an inherently bad thing. On the contrary. Extractive industries employ thousands of our members and, by extension, me.

We have often referred to ourselves as “Canada’s Mining Union”. We care about the industry and we care about how well our employers uphold our rights – it’s why we have collective bargaining in the first place – and we care about how those same employers uphold the rights of workers and communities in developing countries.

But just as we don’t think companies should operate here without the balance of collective bargaining to protect our rights, nor do we think companies should operate in other countries without formal checks and balances on their treatment of workers, communities and the environment. We believe workers’ rights are human rights and that is the context of our support for Bill C-300.

One more note about my own experience – I have also been certified by the DeGroote School of Business as a Chartered Director, qualified to sit on corporate boards of directors. The role of these boards has expanded in the 21st Century to include not only the interests of shareholders but those of stakeholders as well. It means that workers, communities and defenders of the environment must be included in sphere of corporate decision-making.

The United Steelworkers did not suddenly wake up and discover that there was a Bill C-300. The Steelworkers union participated actively in the National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility carried out in 2006. We anticipated that the government of Canada would take the consensus report of 27 recommendations and establish a stronger regulatory framework to hold Canadian companies accountable for human rights, labour rights and environmental protections in their operations in developing countries.

It was not to be. It took almost two years and the government response was as if the Roundtables never happened. The so-called Corporate Social Responsibility – or CSR – strategy was a slide backwards to voluntary corporate self-regulation by corporations, and suggested that weak host governments in developing countries, not corporate behaviour, are at the root of problems in the extractive sector.

Mining, oil and gas companies are the face of Canada abroad. They gain further credibility -- and identity as part of official Canadian policy -- through the co-financing they enjoy from the Export Development Corporation, and the support they receive from Team Canada Missions and local Canadian embassy facilities.

Yet, when Steelworker members employed in mining and mineral processing carry out labour exchanges in countries like Argentina, Chile, Peru, South Africa and Guatemala, we find a huge disparity between the corporate behaviour of these companies at home and their corporate behaviour abroad.

Our union has negotiated long and hard to establish decent wages and pensions, safe workplaces through joint health and safety initiatives, and environmental measures to protect surrounding communities. The companies claim to take these ‘best practices’ with them when they go to developing countries – but our experience on the ground shows otherwise.

Our members employed by Teck, for example, have worked for several years with union members from Teck-owned mines in Chile and Peru.

These miners work at operations typically located at 4,000 metres above sea level. Despite an abundance of readily available research studies on the long-term affects of working at altitude – and constant lobbying by worker representatives in both Chile and Peru – Teck refuses to recognize long-term exposure to high altitude as an industrial disease. Practical solutions are ignored or declared “too expensive”.

These conditions mean workers suffer from headaches, loss of appetite and an inability to sleep. Exposure leads to significantly increased risk of heart attack, pulmonary and cerebral edema. There is no compensation for workers unable to work to retirement, leaving them unable to provide support for their families.

While, Canadian companies continue to resist protection for high-altitude workers, Export Development Canada has supported the Antemina Mine in Peru with $650-million in political risk insurance.

Earlier this year in Argentina, the United Steelworkers received a request for solidarity action in response to the unjust dismissal by Barrick Gold Corporation of Jose Vicente Leiva, a labour leader at Barrick’s Veladero Mine, which received $75-million in project financing from Export Development Canada in 2004 and $125-million in political risk insurance.

Veladero is another high-altitude operation, where workers live in tents without winter gear while the temperature can reach minus 20 Celsius. Rock slides are a regular occurrence and two workers were killed in 2006. Leiva traveled down 4,600 metres to meet Barrick management with a list of proposals for improved safety practices and was told to come back in a week for an answer. He returned only to be met by management reinforced by Argentinean officials and no willingness to address the issues.

Backed by an Argentinean law allowing free association, Mr. Leiva and the other Barrick workers set out to form a new, independent union and sought affiliation with the Argentinean Workers Central, the CTA. Even before the application for recognition was fully processed, Mr. Leiva received notice from Barrick that he was terminated without cause.

The cause, however, was that Leiva and his members had exercised their rights and contested unfair practices at the Barrick mine.

Mr. Leiva was recently reinstated -- not through any sudden epiphany on the part of Barrick – but because national and international pressure was brought to bear.

The story of Jose Leiva and his members proved once again the adage we have turned to time and time again as we have fought for dignity and safety in Canadian mines: “A mining company is only as good as its opposition”.

Without a tool like Bill C-300, there are no checks and balances, only a fiduciary mandate. The fact that our mining companies have gone abroad has prompted us to go global as a union. We have followed our managers to countries like South Africa and Chile and Nicaragua. We are building global networks with workers who share a common transnational employer.

The knowledge we have gained of corporate practices and labour conditions in other countries is helping us as we deal with the new challenges brought by foreign ownership in mines in Canada. Yesterday’s mining giants like Inco and Falconbridge and Noranda are now replaced by companies like Vale Inco and Xstrata. Three of Vale’s four nickel operations have been on strike for more than three months, fighting back as this company tries to introduce two-tier wages and a much weaker pension plan.

Bill C-300 is neither punitive nor restrictive for extractive companies. It simply provides a transparent framework for accountability and can only be invoked when violations become apparent. It refers to internationally recognized standards and ensures that financial and diplomatic assistance is contingent on good corporate behaviour. It is a social contract that allows companies to prosper and thrive – but not with an absolute lack of scrutiny by the Canadian taxpayers who are facilitating their offshore activities.

Thank you for your attention and I welcome any questions the committee may have.