| A group of ministers in Calgary has joined forces to try and hold mining companies more accountable for their activities overseas.
United Church minister Clint Mooney says it makes sense for Calgary churches to become active on the issue due to the activities of a Calgary-based mining company, TVI Pacific Inc., in the Philippines.
TVI Pacific Inc. is currently operating a gold mine on the island of Mindanao that has been mired in controversy. Mining Watch Canada has been critical of the mine for years – the group has a report on its website from the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Centre in the Philippines, which explains that the area where the gold mine is located, Mount Canatuan, has long been considered sacred by a local indigenous group, the Subanons. The report argues that the Philippine government gave the indigenous group land-claim rights in the area and that the mine never should have been allowed. Since the mine was constructed, families have had to relocate and the report claims that TVI has hired a security force, the Special Armed Auxiliaries, that harasses and intimidates local indigenous people.
Another Filipino non-governmental organization (NGO), DIOPIM Committee on Mining Issues, has testimony on its website from indigenous people living in the area surrounding the mine who claim that it has contaminated local waterways with cyanide, which has killed off fish.
TVI Pacific Inc. denies all these allegations.
"For a country that supports the United Nations and respects treaties for all the people of the world, it’s right that we would hold our companies to human rights standards that are also the best in the world," says Mooney.
The Calgary group of ministers are members of Kairos, a nationwide group of churches that fights for social justice. Kairos has been trying to raise awareness about the need to make mining companies operating overseas more accountable, and Mooney says Calgary ministers want to play their part, although they are in the preliminary stages of organizing.
Catherine Coumans, research co-ordinator for Mining Watch Canada, has visited the TVI mine herself and has many concerns after speaking to locals.
"There’s a lot of really serious social issues and there’s also a lot of concerns about environmental impacts," she says.
Coumans says the federal government has to take more action to ensure mining companies aren’t conducting themselves in unethical ways in foreign countries because Canada is a major world player in the mining industry.
She argues that companies that don’t operate ethically shouldn’t receive political and financial support from the federal government, and that Canada needs a law that would allow people from foreign countries to sue Canadian corporations on Canadian soil.
"If you go to average Canadians and tell them what some of our companies are doing overseas, they’re absolutely appalled," says Coumans. "People all over the world now don’t see Canada as a benign or friendly country because they’ve basically lived in the shadow of a Canadian mine. In the Philippines, they call Canadians ‘the ugly Canadians’ and so this is a whole different face of Canada that’s being exported at the moment."
Last year the federal standing committee on foreign affairs and international trade submitted a report to government, which made a number of recommendations about how to make mining companies operating in developing countries adhere to higher standards. The standing committee also called on the government to investigate TVI Pacific Inc’s operations in the Philippines.
The government promised to hold round table discussions throughout Canada on mining companies operating overseas, but it didn’t commit to investigating TVI.
Paul Moon, director of corporate communication for TVI, says there’s been a lot of misinformation dispersed about his company and adds that the company allows anyone to visit the mine to see it first-hand.
"We’ve been very, very open in terms of inviting everyone from NGOs, from governments… to come and view exactly what we’re doing," says Moon. "We have an open-door policy and a tagline that says, ‘this mine is yours.’" |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.