http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/business/
Lina Holguin is a Policy Director at Oxfam Canada and Oxfam-Quebec.
Recently, Canada’s Parliament introduced the Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act, which could have a huge impact on people around the world experiencing the “resource curse.”
More than 60 per cent of the world’s poorest people live in countries rich in natural resources — but they rarely share in the wealth. Too often, poor communities have no say in the extraction of resources from their land and receive little information about the scope of these projects, the revenues they generate, their timelines and potential impacts.
The legislation would increase transparency in the oil, gas and mining industry by requiring Canadian companies to disclose the payments they make to governments for the extraction of natural resources. The legislation, part of the omnibus bill introduced last month, is an important first step to helping citizens of resource-rich countries increase accountability and fight corruption.
The finalized legislation needs to align with global transparency standards already in place around the world, including in the European Union and the U.S., which require company by company, country by country, public, project-level disclosure. Publish What You Pay Canada, of which Oxfam is a member, has proposed amendments to the law that would bring it into line with these standards. At the moment, the act has critical gaps that must be filled to make it effective and to deter corruption.
Project level reporting is critical for these goals: communities must know how much each company is paying their governments for each mining, oil or gas project so they can manage expectations and hold their governments to account for the responsible management of those scarce resources. Project-level disclosure is also essential for fighting corruption by ensuring no money is siphoned off by corruption at some point in the process.
The Canadian government has publicly indicated that it supports this level of transparency, which is encouraging. The Canadian mining industry has been a partner with civil society on this work. In January, the Canadian mining industry, led by the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), released recommendations for the government that endorsed strong transparency rules — including requirements for project-by-project disclosure.
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