Canadian Mining Companies and Domestic Law Reform: A Critical Legal Account

In the last decade, Canada has become the most important home jurisdiction for mining companies operating globally. Certain Canadian NGOs, faith groups and labor unions argue that these activities systematically give rise to conflicts between companies and local communities in circumstances where companies frequently enjoy effective impunity for the human rights violations they may commit. This assessment has prompted these groups and other likeminded actors to advocate for a series of law reform proposals. This article offers a critical legal account of these law reform efforts, undertaken between 2005 and 2012, together with the government?s response, introduced in 2009. It begins in Part B by introducing the social and economic context that forms the backdrop of these efforts. This consists of a description of the Canadian foreign mining sector and some of the associated social conflicts. Extractive activities and conflicts in Latin American are profiled in particular given the significance of that region for Canadian mining companies. The relevant proposals for legal reform in Canada are then reviewed in Part C in terms of three periods. In the first, federal advisors made proposals that attempted to reconcile private and public approaches to regulation. In the second, the federal government introduced a corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy predicated on volunteerism. And in the third period, three individual Members of Parliament have tabled private members? bills, each representing very different private and public approaches to regulation.